Note 1095 — Chapter VII

To this sort of comparative anatomy (if it may be so called), which before his time scarcely existed, Bichat attached great importance, and clearly saw that it would eventually become of the utmost value for pathology. Anat. Gén. vol. i. pp. 331, 332, vol. ii. pp. 234–241, vol. iv. p. 417, &c. Unfortunately these investigations were not properly followed up by his immediate successors; and Müller, writing long after his death, was obliged to refer chiefly to Bichat for ‘the true principles of general pathology.’ Müller's Physiology, 1840, vol. i. p. 808. M. Vogel too, in his Pathological Anatomy, 1847, pp. 398, 413, notices the error committed by the earlier pathologists, in looking at changes in the organs, and neglecting those in the tissues; and the same remark is made in Robin et Verdeil, Chimie Anatomique, 1853, vol. i. p. 45; and in Henle, Traité d'Anatomie, vol. i. p. vii., Paris, 1843. That ‘structural anatomy,’ and ‘structural development,’ are to be made the foundations of pathology, is, moreover, observed in Simon's Pathology, 1850, p. 115 (compare Williams's Principles of Medicine, 1848, p. 67), who ascribes the chief merit of this ‘rational pathology’ to Henle and Schwann: omitting to mention that they only executed Bichat's scheme and (be it said with every respect for these eminent men) executed it with a comprehensiveness much inferior to that displayed by their great predecessor. In Broussais, Examen des Doctrines Médicales, vol. iv. pp. 106, 107, there are some just and liberal observations on the immense service which Bichat rendered to pathology. See also Béclard, Anatomie, Paris, 1852, p. 184.