Xavier Bichat

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This truth will conduct us to the fundamental principles of all social education whatever; namely, that no individual at the same time, should be applied to many studies, even if it be wished that he should succeed in all of them. Philosophers have long insisted upon this maxim, but I doubt whether the moral reasons on which they have founded it, are all of them together worth this single and beautiful physiological observation by which it is demonstrated, that for the purpose of augmenting the powers of one organ, there are no other means than those of diminishing the powers of the others. ”

“ I shall not repeat the proofs of this assertion, but supposing it to be demonstrated, I shall assert that there does not exist for the passions as there does for the sensations a fixed and constant centre; that on the contrary the liver, the lungs, the spleen, the stomach, and the heart, are turn by turn affected, and at such time form that epigastric centre so celebrated in modern works; and if in general we refer to this region the sensible impression of all our affections, the reason is that all the important viscera of the organic life, are there concentrated. ”

“ But no doubt it will be asked, why the organs of the internal life have received from nature, an inferior degree of sensibility only, and why they do not transmit to the brain the impressions, which they receive, while all the acts of the animal life imply this transmission? the reason is simply this, that all the phenomena, which establish our connexions with surrounding objects ought to be, and are in fact under the influence of the will; while all those, which serve for the purpose of assimilation only, escape, and ought indeed to escape such influence. ”

“ In one man the passions are the great principle of motion; the influence of his animal life is continually surpassed by that of his organic life, and incessantly induces him to act in a way to which the will is almost a stranger, and which often entails upon him the bitterest regret, when his animal life resumes its empire. In another man, the animal life is the stronger of the two. In such case, the understanding seems to be augmented at the expense of the passions, the latter remaining in that silence, to which the organization of the individual has condemned them. ”

“ The vital powers, and their exciting causes, are continually varying, and thus occasion a constant instability in the functions of the organs, for a thousand causes may at every moment double or triple the activity of the circulation, and respiration, increase or diminish the quantity of bile, urine, or saliva, and suspend or augment the nutrition of the parts. Hunger, food, sleep, motion, rest, and the passions may all of them impress upon these functions so great a mobility, as every day to make them run through a hundred degrees of strength or weakness. ”

“ It is generally known that every kind of asphyxia affects the brain in the first instance; that the functions of this organ are the first to be annihilated; that the animal life, and particularly the sensations cease; that all our relations with exterior objects are instantly suspended, and that the organic functions are only consecutively interrupted. Whatever be the mode of asphyxia, by submersion, strangulation, gases, or a vacuum, the same phenomena occur at all times. ”

“ But what is the reason why the black-blooded heart is the last to beat? because, says Haller, it is the longest excited; because it contains a greater quantity of blood; because the blood is sent into it from the largest veins of the system, and regurgitates from the lungs. The famous experiment is well known by which in emptying the black-blooded cavities, and tying the aorta so as to retain the blood within the red-blooded cavities, the contractions of the latter are prolonged so much beyond the contractions of the former. ”

“ Universality of knowledge in the same individual is a chimera; it is repugnant to the laws of our organization, [151] and if history afford us some few instances of extraordinary men, who have thrown an equal light upon many of the sciences, such instances are but so many exceptions to the common laws of nature; for who are we, that we should venture on the pursuit of many things at once, and hope to attain in all of them a perfection, which for the most part, even when we have but a single object in view, escapes us? ”

“ If, of the two sensations which form a sound, the one be received by a strong and well formed organ, the other by a weak one, the impressions will be unequal; the brain also, because it is differently affected by each, will be the seat of an imperfect perception. Such conformation constitutes what is called an incorrect or false ear. For what reason does it happen that one man is unpleasantly affected by a dissonance, while another does not even perceive it? ”

“ Is it true that common people observe without prejudice? Have they not, on the contrary, on several physiological and pathological phenomena deeply rooted prejudices? It is besides a very singular idea to wish to judge by the name which they give to an affection, of the organ primarily affected. If we always reasoned in this way the expression of sick at heart which is given to nausea, would assign to vomiting a wholly different nature from what would be correct. ”

“ On the contrary, the organic life comes into action almost as soon as the fœtus is conceived; for as soon as the least organization is apparent, the little heart will be seen protruding its blood on all sides. The heart is the first formed part, the first in action: now, as all the organic phenomena depend upon it, we may readily conceive in what way the functions of the inward life are thrown into exercise. ”

“ We every day observe, that inflammation in exalting the organic sensibility of a part, transforms the organic into the animal sensibility: the cartilages thus, and the serous membranes which in their ordinary state have only the obscure sentiment, which is necessary to their nutrition, in an inflammatory state are possessed of an animal sensibility, which is frequently stronger than that of the organs to which it is natural. ”

“ Were we even possessed of such power, we should gain but little knowledge from it: the laws of life in fact are so changed, so modified, so altered in their very nature, by the various morbid affections to which the parts are subject, that but very seldom can we depart from the known phenomena of the living animal, when we undertake to inquire into those which it exhibits in its dying moments. For such inquiries it would be necessary to know what is that intermediate state between health and death, in which the functions experience so remarkable a change ”

“ 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 [16] 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. ”

“ Let us at present compare the above-mentioned phenomena with those of the organic life, and the latter we [53] shall see as constantly withdrawn from the influence of habit, as the former are subject to it.—Habit has never modified the circulation, or respiration, has never changed the mode of the processes of exhalation, absorption, or nutrition. A thousand causes would every day endanger our very existence, were these essential functions under the influence of habit. ”

“ It follows also, from the principles which are above established, that respiration is a mixed function, a function placed as it were between the two lives, to which it serves as a point of contact, belonging to the animal life by its mechanical functions, and to the organic life, by its chemical functions; and hence we have the reason no doubt, why the existence of the lungs is as much connected with that of the brain, as with that of the heart. ”

“ But does not every thing on the contrary lead us to believe that anger exists before the agitation of the heart, and that this is the effect of it and not the cause? This agitation of the heart without doubt, by sending to the brain a greater quantity of blood than usual, contributes in its turn to develop and support the kind of alienation which accompanies anger; but it is necessary that the passion should already exist, since a favourable event, by producing as rapid motions of the heart, will produce nothing similar. ”

“ Physics and chemistry are related to each other in many points, because the same laws in a variety of instances preside over the phenomena of both of them; but an immense interval divides them from the science of organic bodies; because a very great difference exists between the laws which are proper to them, and those of life. To say that physiology is made up of the physics of animals, is to give a very inaccurate idea of it; as well might we say that astronomy is the physiology of the stars. ”

“ Harmony is to the functions of the organs, what symmetry is to their conformation; it supposes a perfect equality of force and action, between their similar parts, just as symmetry indicates an exact analogy of external form, and internal structure: indeed it is a necessary consequence of symmetry, for two parts essentially alike in structure, cannot much differ in their manner of action. Hence we should be naturally led to the following conclusion, namely, that harmony is the character of the animal, discordance that of the organic functions. ”

“ Anger accelerates the circulation of the blood, it multiplies the efforts of the heart. The passion of joy has not indeed so marked an influence upon the circulation, but alters it notwithstanding, and carries it lightly towards the skin. Terror acts inversely; this passion being characterized by a feebleness in the vascular system, a feebleness, which in hindering the blood from arriving at the capillary vessels, occasions the paleness which at such time is so particularly remarked. The effects of sadness and sorrow are nearly analogous. ”

“ Hence we may conceive how the contact of a body upon a living surface may cease to be painful, while any division or solution of continuity of one of our organs will be always more or less so, because the nerves that are divided are unaccustomed to this sensation, and still possess their whole sensibility. The sense of sight furnishes us with a striking example of sensibility being exhausted by the continuation of the sensation ”

“ Physicians must be well persuaded, that by far the greater number of diseases, put an end to life by an affection of the lungs. Whatever be the seat of the principal affection, be it either an organic lesion, or a general disorder of the system, the action of the lungs in the latter moments of existence, becomes embarrassed, the respiration difficult, and the oxydation of the blood, but slowly effected; accordingly this fluid must pass into the arteries, almost in the venous state. ”

“ There is then no doubt, that often in man the air passes from the lungs into the cellular texture, without entering the arterial system. My experiments on animals have not been exactly analogous to what happens from the introduction of a foreign body, when a part of the air enters and goes out. It is then probable that from a cause precisely similar would arise also the same effect in animals.
And vice versa, the passage of the air in the blood-vessels sometimes takes place in man, without the infiltration of the cellular organ; then the death is sudden. ”

“ Examine the philosopher, who in his abstract meditations, and in the silence of the closet condemns to inaction his external and locomotive powers. Examine him by chance attempting any exercise of the body, and you will laugh at his awkwardness and air of constraint ”