Xavier Bichat
Physiological Researches on Life and Death.

(Translated by F. Gold. Boston: Richardson and Lord, 1827, pp. 9-24.)

Chapter 1.

General Division of Life [1].

The definition of life is usually sought for in abstract considerations; it will be found, if I mistake not, in the following general expression: Life consists in the sum of the functions, by which death is resisted. [2]

In living bodies, such in fact is the mode of existence, that whatever surrounds them, tends to their destruction. They are influenced incessantly by inorganic bodies; they exercise themselves, the one upon the other, as constant an action; under such circumstances they could not long subsist, were they not possessed in themselves of a permanent principle of reaction. This principle is that of life; unknown in its nature, it can be only appreciated by its phenomena: an habitual alternation of action and reaction between exterior bodies, and the living body, an alternation, of which the proportions vary according to the age of the latter, is the most general of these phenomena.

There is a superabundance of life in the child: In the child, the reaction of the system is superior to the action, which is made upon it from without. In the adult, action and reaction are on a balance; the turgescence of life is gone. In the old man, the reaction of the inward principle is lessened, the action from without remaining unaltered; it is then that life languishes, and insensibly advances towards its natural term, which ensues when all proportion ceases.

The measure, then, of life in general, is the difference which exists between the effort of exterior power, and that of interior resistance. The excess of the former is an indication of its weakness; the predominance of the latter an index of its force.

I. Division of Life into Animal and Organic Life. [3]

Such is life considered in the aggregate; examined more in detail it offers us two remarkable modifications, the one common to the vegetable and the animal; the other belonging exclusively to the latter. In comparing two individuals from each of the living kingdoms, the one will be seen existing only within itself, having with what surrounds it the relations only of nutrition, attached to the soil, in which its seed has been implanted, born there, growing there, and perishing there. The other will be observed combining with this interior life, which in the highest degree it enjoys, an exterior life by which it acquires a very numerous series of relations with all surrounding bodies, a life, which couples it to the existence of every other being, by which it is approximated, or removed from the objects of its desires or its fears, and seems in appropriating every thing in nature to itself, to consider every thing with regard to its individual existence only. [4]

Thus it might be said, that the vegetable is only the sketch, or rather the ground-work of the animal; that for the formation of the latter, it has only been requisite to clothe the former with an apparatus of external organs, by which it might be connected with external objects.

From hence it follows, that the functions of the animal are of two very different classes. By the one (which is composed of an habitual succession of assimilation and excretion) it lives within itself, transforms into its proper substance the particles of other bodies, and afterwards rejects them when they are become heterogeneous to its nature. By the other, it lives externally, is the inhabitant of the world, and not as the vegetable of a spot only; it feels, it perceives, it reflects on its sensations, it moves according to their influence, and frequently is enabled to communicate by its voice its desires, and its fears, its pleasures, and its pains.

The aggregate of the functions of the first order, I shall name the organic life, because all organized beings, whether animal or vegetable, enjoy it more or less, because organic texture is the sole condition necessary to its existence. The sum of the functions of the second class, because it is exclusively the property of the animal, I shall denominate the animal life.

The series of the phenomena of these two lives, relate to the individual. Generation, as a function, regards the species, and thus has no place among them. Its connections with the greater number of the other functions are but very indirect; it commences a long time after them, it is extinct a long time before them. In the greater number of animals the periods of its activity are separated by long intervals of time, and during these, it is absolutely null. Even in man, with whom the remissions of its impulses, are much less durable, it has not a much more extensive connexion with the rest of the system. Castration is almost always marked by a general increase of the nutritive process; the eunuch, enjoying indeed a less degree of vital energy, but the phenomena of his life being displayed with a greater exuberance. We shall here, then, lay aside the consideration of the laws which give us existence, and occupy ourselves alone on those which maintain us in existence. Of the former we shall speak hereafter.

II. Subdivision of each of the two lives into two orders of functions.

The animal and the organic life, are each of them composed of two orders of functions, which succeed each other, and are concatenated in an inverse direction.

In the animal life, the first order is established from the exterior of the body, towards the brain; the second from the brain towards the organs of locomotion and the voice. The impression of objects successively affects the senses, the nerves and the brain. The first receive, the second transmit, the third perceives the impression. The impression, in such way, received, transmitted, and perceived, constitutes sensation.

The animal, in the first order of these functions, is almost passive; in the second, he becomes active.-This second order is the result of the successive actions of the brain (where volition has been produced in consequence of the previous sensation) of the nerves, which transmit such volition, and of the locomotive organs and voice, which are the agents of volition. External bodies act upon the animal by means of the first order of these functions, the animal reacts upon them by means of the second.

In general there exists between the two orders a rigorous proportion; where the one is very marked, the other is put forth with energy. In the series of living beings, the animal, which feels the most, moves also the most. The age of lively perception, is that also of vivacity of motion; in sleep, where the first order is suspended, the second ceases, or is exercised only with irregularity. The blind man, who is but half alive to what surrounds him, moves also with a tardiness which would very soon be lost, were his exterior communications to be enlarged.

A double movement is also exercised in the organic life; the one composes, the other decomposes the animal. Such is the mode of existence in the living body, that what it was at one time it ceases to be at another. Its organization remains unaltered, but its elements vary every moment. The molecules of its nutrition by turns absorbed and rejected, from the animal pass to the plant, from the plant to inorganic matter, return to the animal, and so proceed in an endless revolution.

To such revolution the organic life is well adapted. One order of its functions assimilates to the animal the substances which are destined to nourish him; another order deprives him of these substances, when, after having for some time made a part of it, they are become heterogeneous to his organization.

The first, which is that of assimilation, results from the functions of digestion, circulation, respiration, and nutrition. Every particle, which is foreign to the body before it becomes an element of it, is subject to the influence of these four functions.

When it has afterwards concurred for some time to the formation of the organs, the absorbents seize on it, and throw it out into the circulatory torrent, where it is carried on anew, and from whence it issues by the pulmonary or cutaneous exhalations, or by the different secretions by which the fluids are ejected from the body

The second order, then, of the functions of the organic life, or that of decomposition, is formed of those of absorption, circulation, exhalation, and secretion.

The sanguiferous system, in consequence, is a middle system, the center of the organic life, as the brain is the center of the animal life. In this system the particles, which are about to be assimilated, are circulated and intermixed with those, which having been already assimilated, are destined to be rejected; so that the blood itself is a fluid composed of two parts; the one, the pabulum of all the parts of the body, and derived from the aliment; the other, excrementitious, composed of the wrecks and residue of the organs, and the source of the exterior secretions and exhalations.-Nevertheless these latter functions serve also, at times, the purpose of transmitting without the body, the products of digestion, although such products may not have concurred to the nourishment of the parts. This circumstance may be observed when urine and sweat are secreted after copious drinking. The skin and the kidneys being at such times the excreting organs, not of the matter of the nutritive, but of that of the digestive process; the same also may be said of the milk of animals, for this is a fluid which certainly has never been assimilated. [5]

There does not exist between the two orders of the functions of the organic life the same relation, which takes place between those of the animal life. The weakness of the first by no means renders absolutely necessary a decrease of action in the second. Hence proceed marasmus and leanness, states, in which the assimilating process ceases in part, the process of excretion remaining unaltered.

Let us leave, then, to other sciences, all artificial method, but follow the concatenation of the phenomena of life, for connecting the ideas which we form of them, and we shall perceive, that the greater part of the present physiological divisions, afford us but uncertain bases for the support of any thing like a solid edifice of science.

These divisions I shall not recapitulate; the best method of demonstrating their inutility will be, if I mistake not, to prove the solidity of the division, which I have adopted. We shall now examine the great differences, which separate the animal existing without, from the animal existing within, and wearing itself away in a continual vicissitude of assimilation and excretion.

Chapter 2.

General Differences of the Two Lives with Regard to the Outward Form of Their Respective Organs.

The organs of the animal life are symmetrical, those of the organic life irregular in their conformation; in this circumstance consists the most essential of their differences. Such character, however, to some animals, and among the fish, to the sole and turbot especially, is not applicable; but in man it is exactly traced, as well as in all the genera which are nearest to him in perfection. In them alone am I about to examine it.

I. Symmetry of the external forms of the animal life. [6]

Two globes in every respect the same, receive the impressions of light. Sounds and odors, have also their double analogous organ. A single membrane is affected to savors, but the median line is manifest upon it, and the two segments, which are indicated by it, are exactly similar. This line indeed is not every where to be seen in the skin, but it is every where implied. Nature, as it were, has forgotten to describe it, but from space to space she has laid down a number of points, which mark its passage. The cleft at the extremity of the nose, of the chin, and the middle of the lips, the umbilicus, the seam of the perineum, the projection of the spinous apophyses of the back, and the hollow at the posterior part of the neck are the principal points at which it is shown.

The Nerves, which transmit the impressions received by the senses, are evidently assembled in symmetrical pairs.

The brain, the organ (on which the impressions of objects are received) is remarkable also for the regularity of its form. Its double parts are exactly alike, and even those which are single, are all of them symmetrically divided by the median line.

The Nerves again, which transmit to the agents of loco-motion and of the voice, the volitions of the brain, the locomotive organs also, which are formed in a great degree of the muscular system, of the bony system, and its dependencies, these together with the larynx and its accessories, composing the double agents of volition, have all of them a regularity, a symmetry, which are invariable.

Such even is the truth of the character which I am now describing, that the muscles and the nerves immediately cease to be regular, as soon as they cease to appertain to the animal life. The heart, and the muscular fibers of the intestines are proofs of this assertion in the muscles; in the nerves, the great sympathetic, is an evidence of its truth.

We may conclude then from simple inspection, that Symmetry is the essential character of the organs of the animal life of man.

II. Irregularity of the exterior forms of the organic life.

If at present we pass to the viscera of the organic life, we shall perceive a character directly the contrary of the former. The stomach, the intestines, the spleen, the liver, etc. are all of them irregularly disposed.

In the system of the circulation, the heart and the large vessels, such as the upper divisions of the aorta, the vena azygos, the vena portae, and the arteria innominata have no one trace of symmetry. In the vessels of the extremities continual varieties are also observed, and when they occur, it is particularly remarkable that their existence on one side in no way affects the other side of the body.

The apparatus of respiration appears indeed at first to be exactly regular; nevertheless, the bronchi are dissimilar in length, diameter, and direction; three lobes compose one of the lungs, two the other: between these organs also, there is a manifest difference of volume; the two divisions of the pulmonary artery resemble each other neither in their course, nor in their diameter; and the mediastinum is sensibly directed to the left. We shall thus perceive that symmetry is here apparent only, and that the common law has no exception.

The organs of exhalation and absorption, the serous membranes, the thoracic duct, the great right lymphatic vessel, and the secondary absorbents of all the parts have a distribution universally unequal and irregular.

In the glandular system also we see the crypts, or mucous follicles disseminated in a disorderly manner in every part; the pancreas, the liver, the salivary glands themselves, though at first sight more symmetrical, are not exactly submitted to the median line; added to this, the kidneys differ from each other in their situation, in the length and size of their artery and vein, and in their frequent varieties more especially . [7]

From considerations so numerous we are led to a result exactly the reverse of the preceding one; namely, that the especial attribute of the organs of the interior life is irregularity of exterior form.

III. Consequences resulting from the difference of exterior form in the organs of the two lives.

It follows from the preceding description, that the animal life is as it were double; that its phenomena performed as they are at the same time on the two sides of the body, compose a system in each of them independent of the opposite system; that there is a life to the right, a life to the left; that the one may exist, the other ceasing to do so, and that they are doubtless intended reciprocally to supply the place of each other.

The latter circumstance we may frequently observe in those morbid affections so common, where the animal sensibility and mobility are enfeebled, or annihilated on one side of the body, and capable of no affection whatever; where the man on one side is little more than the vegetable, while on the other he preserves his claim to the animal character. Undoubtedly those partial palsies, in which the median line, is the limit where the faculties of sensation and motion finish, and the origin from whence they begin can never be remarked so invariably in animals, which, like the oyster, have an irregular exterior.

On the contrary the organic life is a single system, in which every thing is connected and concatenated; where the functions on one side cannot be interrupted, and those on the other subsist. A diseased liver influences the state of the stomach; if the colon on one side cease to act, that upon the other side cannot continue in action: the same attack, which arrests the circulation in the right side of the heart, will annihilate it also in the left side of the heart. Hence it follows, the internal organs on one side being supposed to suspend their functions, that those on the other must remain inactive, and death ensue.

This assertion, however, is a general one; it is only applicable to the sum of the organic life, and not to its isolated phenomena. Some of them in fact are double, and their place may be supplied-the kidneys and lungs are of this description.

I shall not inquire into the cause of this remarkable difference, which in man, and those animals which approach him the nearest, distinguishes the organs of the two lives. I shall only observe, that it enters essentially into the nature of their phenomena, and that the perfection of the animal functions is so connected with the general symmetry observed in their respective organs, that every thing which troubles such symmetry, will more or less impair the functions.

It is from thence, no doubt, that proceeds this other difference of the two lives, namely, that nature very rarely varies the usual conformation of the organs of the animal life. Grimaud has made this observation, but has not shown the principle on which it depends.

It is a fact, which cannot have escaped any one the least accustomed to dissection, that the spleen, the liver, the stomach, the kidneys, the salivary glands, and others of the internal life, are frequently various in form, size, position, and direction. Such in the vascular system are these varieties, that scarcely will any two subjects be found exactly alike under the scalpel of the anatomist: the organs of absorption, the lymphatic glands in particular, are rarely the same either in number or volume, neither do the mucous glands in any way affect a fixed and analogous situation.

And not only is each particular system subject to frequent aberrations, but the whole of the organs of the internal life are sometimes found in the inverse of the natural order. Of this I have lately seen an instance.

Let us now consider the organs of the animal life, the senses, the brain, the voluntary muscles, and the larynx: here every thing is exact, precise, and rigorously determined. In these there is scarcely ever seen a variety of conformation; if there do exist any, the functions are troubled, disturbed, or destroyed: they remain unaltered in the organic life, whatever may be the disposition of the parts.

The difference with respect to action, in the organs of the two lives, depends, undoubtedly, upon the symmetry of the one, whose functions the least change of conformation would have disturbed, and on the irregularity of the other, with which these different changes very well agree.

The functions of every organ of the animal life are immediately connected with the resemblance of the organ to its fellow on the opposite side if double, or if single to its similarity of conformation in its two halves: from hence the influence of organic changes upon the derangement of the functions may be well conceived.

But this assertion will become more sensible, when I shall have pointed out the relations which exist between the symmetry and the irregularity of the organs, and the harmony and the discordance of their functions.


Notes by François Magendie

[1] The form adopted by Bichat, in this work, has been much blamed by some, and extravagantly praised by others. The blame and the praise appear to me to be equally misplaced. His object was to exhibit the various phenomena of life; the order in which this was to be done was a matter of indifference. If Bichat gave a preference to this form it was because it was conformable to the nature of his mind; and he accomplished his task in a very happy manner. The division that he has adopted is not new, it may be found, with slight modifications in writers of different periods, and even in Aristotle. Besides, it is not necessary in the sciences to attach a very great importance to classification. All these contrivances have been invented only to aid the memory; and the functions of living bodies are not so numerous, as to render it necessary in studying them to lean upon systematic divisions.

[2] The word life has been employed by physiologists in two different senses. With some, it means an imaginary being, the sole principle of all the functions which living bodies exhibit; with others, it means only the assemblage of these functions. It is in this last sense that Bichat employs it. This is what he means to say in the following sentence. Life is the assemblage of the functions which resist death. He is wrong only in allowing the idea of death to enter into it; for this idea necessarily supposes that of life. There is then really a bad circle in this definition; but in putting aside what is defective in the expression, it may be seen that Bichat considers life as a result, not as a cause.

Before and since the time of Bichat, a great number of definitions of life has been given, which are either false or incomplete. It should not be required of a definition, that it should give all the properties of the thing which it is designed to make known, this would be a description; but we have a right to expect that it should assign to this thing certain characters which belong to it alone, and thus distinguish it from every thing else.

Let us examine by this principle the definition adopted in a modern work. Life, it is said, is the assemblage of the phenomena which succeed each other, for a limited time, in an organized being. This is no doubt true of life; but, if it can also be applied to another state, it ceases to be a definition. An animal has just died; its organs from that moment are subject to the action of chemical affinities only; decomposition takes place, gases are disengaged, fluids flow out and new solid aggregates are formed. After a time every molecular motion ceases; there remains only a certain number of binary, ternary combinations, etc. Here then is an assemblage of phenomena taking place for a limited time in an organized body, and yet it is not life.

[3] This distinction of the two lives is bad, inasmuch as it tends to separate phenomena which have a very intimate connexion, which relate to a common object, and which are often produced by means in every respect similar. Why should I rank among the organs of animal life the muscular apparatus which carries the alimentary mass from the mouth into the oesophagus, and among those of the other life, that which takes it from the cardiac orifice to the anus? Is not the action of the first apparatus in relation with nutrition as well as the action of the last, and does not the muscular apparatus of the oesophagus act upon a body which is foreign to us, as well as that of the tongue and the pharynx? Do the motions of mastication differ in their object from those of which we have just spoken, and as to the means of execution, does not the muscular action still perform the principal part?

We might in the same way bring near each other the motions by means of which we seize our food. The action itself of the senses, which directs these motions, is, with nutrition, in a relation more remote, but not less necessary, and we see in the various classes of animals that their apparatus is modified according to the different kinds of nourishment. If the distinction of the two lives be wanting in justice, as to the object of the functions it separates, we shall soon see that the characters attached to the organs of one and the other do not establish this division in a more striking manner.

[4] This division between vegetables and animals is far from being so striking as is here supposed; these two classes of beings, so different when we examine them in the individuals endowed with a very complicated organization, approximate each other in a remarkable degree, when we descend to those species whose structure is most simple; it is even remarkable that the most constant character which distinguishes one from the other, is not found in the organs of animal life, but in those of vegetable or organic life. The senses are one after the other found wanting; for in an individual in whom we can discover no nervous system, there is no more reason to suppose the existence of the sense of touch as a sensation, than to suppose it in the sensitive plant, the dionaea muscipula, and other similar plants; we see only action and reaction. The motions of the arms of certain polypi no more suppose volition than the motion of the root which follows a wet sponge, or that of the branches which turn towards the light; the only very constant character is the absence or presence of a digestive cavity. To speak of an animal as a vegetable clothed with an external apparatus of organs of relation, is a more brilliant than profound view of the subject. Buisson, who, in his division of the physiological phenomena, avoids this inaccuracy, has himself fallen into error; he pretends that respiration belongs exclusively to animals; and that thus the division of Bichat was not only,unfounded but also incomplete, since this function, which is neither of vegetation nor of relation, could be ranked under neither life. Buisson was not well informed; no doubt the respiration of vegetables does not exhibit the most apparent phenomena of the respiration of the mammalia, but every thing, which essentially constitutes the function, is found in the one as well as in the other; absorption of the atmospheric air, and the formation and exhalation of a new gas; the rest is only accidental and is not an appendage but in certain classes of animals. In some reptiles, though we find a particular organ for respiration, this organ is not indispensable; it may be removed, and the skin becomes the only respiratory organ; and when finally we come to consider animals with tracheae, we see that the conformity becomes more and more evident.

[5] Bichat seems here to adopt the generally received opinion that it is the chyle which furnishes to the mammary gland the materials of which the milk is composed. We know not whence this opinion arises, if it be not from the gross resemblance which the chyle and milk often exhibit. This resemblance, if it were very great, would be a poor reason for admitting, without anatomical proof, so singular a fact; but it is very far from being perfect. The chyle in fact does not exhibit the milky appearance and the white opaque color, only when the animal from whom it is taken, has fed upon substances containing fat; in all other cases, it is almost transparent; its odor and taste, under all circumstances, differ entirely from those of milk; if these two fluids are left to themselves, the milk remains a long time without coagulating, but the chyle almost immediately coagulates, and then separates into three parts. The solid portion soon exhibits cells, and an appearance of organization; nothing similar is seen in the cogulum of milk; the serum of the milk remains colorless when exposed to the simple contact of the air, that of the chyle assumes a rosy tint, often very vivid. Finally, if we examine the chemical composition of these two fluids, we shall find in them differences still more striking. (See for further details, my Elements of Physiology Vol. 2.)

[6] It is rather to the external forms that symmetry appears to have been primitively attached, and it is in some measure accidentally and because the nature of their functions requires in general that they should be placed on the exterior, that the organs of relation are found modified in virtue of this law. In the example cited, of fishes without a bladder, the eyes, to lose nothing of their utility, must be differently placed, and on the face, which alone is in relation with the light; yet even in this case, the symmetry of external forms has been displaced rather than destroyed, and at the first examination it seems complete. When the organs of relation are found placed on the interior, they frequently exhibit some irregularity, and to take an example of a known animal, the organ of voice, in the male duck, is a very remarkable one; in man even, the wind-pipe is not symmetrical, after it arrives at the first division of the bronchia. On the contrary, among the organs of the other life, those which are prominent on the exterior, constantly present the symmetrical character, as the thyroid gland, the mammary glands, etc.

[7] If we deny symmetry to the kidneys, because they are not uniformly composed of the same number of lobes in children, we must deny it also to the brain, the two lobes of which never exhibit the same arrangement in their circumvolutions; if we deny it to the salivary glands, because one is larger than the other, we must deny it to the extremities, because the right is usually more developed than the left. If these examples are not enough, a host of others might be cited; such as, the atrabiliary capsules, the bladder, the different organs of generation and lactation, and the very regular arrangement of the mucous follicles in certain parts situated upon the median line, etc. As to the anomalies that are observed in the distribution of the bloodvessels, they are also observed very frequently, though in a less evident manner, in the distribution of the nervous branches.