Xavier Bichat

“ It is not the pain of death, which we fear; how many dying men are there for whom the gift of existence would be precious, though purchased at the expense of an uninterrupted series of suffering! If we look at the animal which lives but little externally, he by no means trembles at beholding the instant of his death. ”

“ Hence why old age is not the age of enjoyments. In fact all our pleasures are almost relative; we have but little that is absolute; now as habit blunts all the relative pleasures, which cease because they have existed, the more the sensations are accumulated by time, the less there are of new ones left to be experienced, and the more are the sources of happiness dried up. For a contrary reason, the happiest age is infancy, because it has before it the whole field of sensations to go over. Man at every step of his career leaves behind him a cause of his enjoyments. ”

“ From all that has been said, it follows, I think, very evidently, that in the pulsation of the arteries, the heart is almost the only power that puts the fluid in motion; that the vessels are then passive, that they obey the motion that is communicated to them, but that they have none of themselves dependant at least on their vitality. Thus nature has chosen for the arterial texture one of those of the economy, in which life is the least evident; as the heart is remarkable for its vital properties, the arteries are remarkable for the absence of them. ”

“ We have already observed, that the animal life arises from the successive actions of the senses, the nerves, the brain, the locomotive organs, and the voice. We shall now consider what harmony of action is, in each of these great divisions.
The precision of our sensations appears to be the more complete in proportion as there exists a resemblance between the two impressions, of which they are each of them the assemblage. We see inaccurately when one of the eyes is better formed, and stronger than the other; when it conveys to the brain a clearer image than its fellow does. ”

“ Observe nutrition; it is clearly the capillary system that distributes everywhere the materials that it has received by the impulse of the heart; now the influence of this does not extend to the place where the nutritive matter is deposited. In fact, its impulse everywhere equal and uniform, pushes the blood with nearly an equal force to all parts, with some exceptions in the fœtus. Now nutrition is on the contrary extremely unequal; at one age, it is one part that takes more increase, consequently receives more nutritive matter; at another age, it is another organ. ”

“ Can we in fact calculate the degrees of a phenomenon which a thousand causes make vary every instant, not only in different individuals, but even in the same, which sleep, digestion, exercise, rest, tranquillity of mind, violence of the passions, day, night, every thing in a word, incessantly modifies? I do not know that we digest twice in exactly the same period, if the urine twice remains the same length of time in the bladder before being discharged, if its jet is twice exactly equal, &c.
The force of the organic muscles often remains in its ordinary degree, or is even increased ”

“ So remarkable a difference then, in the two symmetrical halves of the body, is not by nature meant as an exception to the general law of harmony of action in the external functions; for those movements, which are executed by the whole of the body, are the more precise in proportion to the smallness of the difference existing in the agility of the muscles of the two sides. How happens it that certain animals leap from rock to rock with such admirable precision, where the least deviation from the intended direction, would plunge them into an abyss? ”

“ What is observation worth, if we are ignorant of the seat of the disease? You may take notes, for twenty years, from morning to night at the bedside of the sick, upon the diseases of the heart, the lungs, the gastric viscera, &c. and all will be to you only a confusion of symptoms, which, not being united in one point, will necessarily present only a train of incoherent phenomena. ”

“ No part feels, is moved and nourished like another, unless it belongs to the same system. Each organ executes on a small scale the phenomena which take place on a large one in the economy; each takes from the circulation the aliment that is proper for it, digests it, throws back into the mass of blood, the portion which is heterogeneous to it, and appropriates to itself that which can nourish it; it is digestion in miniature. No doubt the ancients wished to give an idea of this truth which has been so well explained by Bordeu, when they said that the womb was a living animal within another. ”

“ When I see a woman weeping or convulsed at any distressing news, and find her pulse in its natural state, I know what to judge of her affliction.—On the contrary, if her grief be concentrated, but her heart beat strongly, or her pulse have been suddenly depressed, I know that she feigns a calm which she does not feel. ”

“ The alterations of organic sensibility can diminish, increase, or variously modify this property. Let us cease to wonder then at the extreme variety of the absorptions; let us not be astonished, if many fluids, besides those ordinarily taken up, can pass into the blood by the absorbents; if the bile, the urine, the mucous fluids, which are usually rejected, can enter the circulation; if the blood effused in the cellular texture is taken up by these vessels. The forces of life impress, by their extreme variety, the same character on all the functions over which they preside. ”

“ These properties are so inherent in bodies, that we cannot conceive of their existence without them. They constitute their essence and their attribute. To exist and to enjoy them are two things inseparable. Suppose that of a sudden they are deprived of them; instantly all the phenomena of nature cease, and matter alone exists. Chaos was only matter without properties; to create the universe, God endowed it with gravity, elasticity, affinity, &c. and to a part he gave sensibility and contractility. ”

“ The blood contains the materials of all the secretions, of the nutrition of all the organs, and of all the exhalations. Each gland draws from this common reservoir what is necessary to its secretion, as each organ does what is proper for its nutrition, and as each serous surface does what is suitable for its exhalation. Now it is by its organic sensibility that each living part of the body distinguishes what its functions require. ”

“ It is as easy to demonstrate, that habit improves and enlarges the judgment.
When, for the first time, the eye wanders over an extensive country, or the ear is struck by a succession of harmonious proportions; when the taste, or the smell for the first time are affected by any very compound savour or scent, there arise from these sensations only confused and inexact ideas. We represent to ourselves the whole, its parts escape us. But let these sensations be repeated, and in proportion as they are so, will the judgment become precise and rigorous, and the knowledge of the object be perfected. ”

“ Why is there not suffering produced, by the irritation of an insensible part that is at the side of a nerve, or even connected with it, whilst the pain is very acute in an inflamed part, though it is at a distance from every nervous cord? Would the nerves then have also, a sphere of activity for motion? But why should the contiguity of the nerve never be sufficient to produce it in the muscles? ”

“ Acute diseases, whatever may be their nature, change it but little. Fevers with the greatest prostration, if they suddenly produce death, leave it untouched, because this colour can only change by nutrition; now as this function is slow in its phenomena, it is but little affected by acute diseases; it is only at the end of some time that it feels the affections reigning in the economy.
I would observe that the varieties of colour that are seen in the muscles of adults, even in the healthy state, distinguish them especially from those of the fœtus, which have in general an uniform paleness. ”

“ Habit which accustoms us to every thing, changes our taste in regard to the colour of the hair, as it does to that of our dress. Black, flaxen and their numerous shades are in turns fashionable in France; and as the organization does not change with our taste, we have contrived artificial hair; a happy means, which seems to subject to our inconstancy the invariable course of nature, and which, changing at our will the expression which the physiognomy borrows from the hair, can at every instant exhibit man under forms which fashion extols to day, and which ridicule pursues tomorrow. ”

“ We may say that by creating first the heart and the brain, and developing them much sooner than the other organs, nature wished first to establish the foundations of the organization of the two lives. For on the one hand, it is the brain which is the centre of animal life; it is to this that all the sensations are referred; it is from it that all the voluntary motions proceed. On the other hand, by sending the blood towards all the organs, the heart evidently presides over the circulation, the secretions, exhalations, nutrition, &c. which compose by their union organic life. ”

“ If chemists apply their theories to these morbid changes of heat, instead of considering them as a necessary consequence of the state in which the vital forces are then found, they will necessarily find in them an insurmountable obstacle.
When we run swiftly, when the blood is violently agitated in the paroxysm of fever, more caloric is disengaged than at any other time. Does this prove that it is the general circulation which contributes to the disengagement of caloric, and that it takes place in the great vessels? No more than a copious sweat proves that the heart drives it out. ”

“ It is not without reason, that the actor who plays the part of a courageous man, takes hold upon the hand of him whom he wishes to set at ease, and lays it on his heart. The exterior movements of the passions, are not a fair criterion of the inward feelings of the individual, for these movements may be feigned as well as real: feigned if they originate in the brain: real if they have their sources in the heart;—in the first case voluntary, in the second involuntary. Touch the pulse of the angry man, if you wish to know whether he really is in anger. ”

“ Man, who opposes nature in every thing, has made it a habit in most societies to cut the hair, the beard, &c. By common people, it is considered merely a thing of fashion; by the physician, as a practice which has perhaps a greater influence than is thought upon the functions. In fact, in the natural state when the pilous system has once acquired its growth, it no longer exhibits the constant motion of composition and decomposition. On the contrary, in man who cuts it, it is constantly the seat of this motion and of that of growth. ”

“ In general, the muscles which owe their length to long fibres, have great extent and very little power of motion; whilst those with short fibres, but multiplied so as to give great length as a whole, are remarkable for an opposite character. And this is the reason: all the fibres being equally large, whatever may be their length, have the same degree of force; it is evident then that this force considered in a muscle as a whole, is measured by the number of its fibres. On the other hand, the longer a fibre is, the more it shortens in its contraction ”

“ Fatigued by long continued action, the senses all alike become for a time, incapable of receiving any further impression. The ear loses its sensibility to sound, the eye to light, the tongue to savours, the pituitary membrane to smells, the touch to the qualities of bodies about which it is conversant, and all this for the sole reason that the respective functions of these different organs, have for a long time been exercised. ”

“ So the vital property is the primum mobile to which we must ascend, whether we consider the phenomena of respiration, of digestion, of secretion, circulation, inflammation, fevers, &c.—In giving existence to every body, nature has imprinted upon it a certain number of properties, that particularly characterize it, and by means of which it contributes in its own manner, to all the phenomena that are developed, succeed, and continually connect themselves in the universe. ”

“ Now if fear acts so powerfully upon the hair, if it can give it a real motion, is it astonishing that grief and pain should suddenly change the fluids that are found in it, and deprive it even of these fluids? ”