Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 3, Athens-BOI

664 BIB-
BIBULUS. Tin best-known of those who bore this
surname, which belonged to the Gens Calpurnia at Rome,
was Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, elected consul with Julius
Gkcsar, 59 b.c. He was the candidate put forward by the
aristocratical party in opposition to L. Lucceius, who was
of the party of Csesar, and bribery was freely used (with
the approval, says Suetonius, of even the rigid Cato) to
secure his election. But he proved no match for his able
colleague. He made an attempt to oppose the agrarian law
introduced by Caesar for distributing the lands of Campania,
but was overpowered and even personally ill-treated by the
violence of the mob. After making vain complaints in the
senate, he shut himself up in his own house during the
remaining eight months of his consulship, taking no part
in public business beyond fulminating edicts against
Caesar’s proceedings, which only provoked an attack upon
his house by a mob of Caesar’s partizans. When the
interests of Caesar and Pompey became divided, Bibulus
supported the latter, and joined in proposing his election
as sole consul (52 b.c.) Next year he went into Syria as
proconsul, and claimed credit for a victory gained by one
of his officers over the Parthians, who had invaded the
province, but which took place before his own arrival in
the country. After the expiration of his government there,
Pompey gave him the command of his fleet in the Ionian
Sea. Here also he proved himself utterly incapable;
distinguishing himself chiefly by the cruel burning, with
all their crews on board, of thirty transport vessels which
had conveyed Caesar from Brundisium to the coast of
Epirus, and which he had captured on their return, having
failed to prevent their passage. He died soon afterwards
of fatigue and mortification. By his wife Portia, daughter
of Cato, afterwards married to Brutus, he had three sons.
The two eldest were murdered in Egypt by some of the
soldiery of Gabinius; the youngest, Lucius Calpurnius
Bibulus, fought on the side of the republic at the battle of
Philippi, but surrendered to Antony soon afterwards, and
was by him appointed to the command of his fleet. He
died while governor of Syria under Augustus.
BICHAT, Marie-Fran^ois-Xavier, a celebrated French
anatomist and physiologist, was born at Thoirette in the
department of Ain, in 1771. His father, who was himself
a physician, was his first instructor. He entered the
College of Nantua, and afterwards studied at Lyons. In
mathematics and the physical sciences he made rapid pro¬
gress. Becoming passionately fond of natural history he
ultimately devoted himself to the study of anatomy and
surgery, under the guidance of Petit, chief surgeon to the
Hotel Dieu at Lyons. He resumed for a time his early
studies, restricting himself, however, within such limits as
did not interfere with his medical pursuits. Petit soon
discerned the superior talents of his pupil, and, although
the latter had scarcely attained the age of twenty, employed
him constantly as his assistant. The revolutionary disturb¬
ances compelled Bichat to fly from Lyons and take refuge
in Paris about the end of the year 1793. He there became
a pupil of the celebrated surgeon Desault. One day,
volunteering to supply the place of an absent pupil who
was to have recapitulated the lecture of the day before,
he acquitted himself so admirably that Desault was strongly
impressed with his genius; and from that time Bichat
became an inmate in his house, and was treated as his
adopted son. For two years he actively participated in all
the labours of Desault, prosecuting at the same time his
own researches in anatomy and physiology. The sudden
death of Desault in 1795 was a severe blow to Bichat.
His first care was to acquit himself of the obligations he
owed his benefactor, by contributing to the support of his
widow and her son, and by conducting to a close the
fourth volume of Desault’s Journal de Ckirurgie, to which
-BIG
he added a biographical memoir of its author. His next
object was to reunite and digest in one body the surgical
doctrines which Desault had published in various periodical
works. Of these he composed, in 1797, the book entitled
CEuvres Chirurgicales de Desault, ou Tableau de sa Doctrine,
et de sa Pratique dans le Traitement des Maladies Externes,
a work in which, although he professes only to set forth
the ideas of another, he develops them with the clearness
and copiousness of one who is a master of the subject. He
was now at liberty to pursue the full bent of his genius,
and, undisturbed by the storms which agitated the political
world, he directed his full attention to surgery, which it
was then his design to practise. We meet with many
proofs of his industry at this period in the Recueil de la
Societe Medicale d'Emulation, an association of which
Bichat was one of the most active members. In 1797
he began a course of anatomical demonstrations, and
his success encouraged him to extend the plan of his
lectures, and boldly to announce a course of operative
surgery. Bichat’s reputation was now fully established,
and he was ever after the favourite teacher with the Paris
students. In the following year, 1798, he gave, in addition
to his course on anatomy and operative surgery, a separate
course of physiology. A dangerous attack of haemoptysis
interrupted for a time these heavy labours ; but the danger
was no sooner past than he plunged into new engagements
with the same ardour as before. He had now scope in his
physiological lectures for a fuller exposition of his original
views on the animal economy, which excited much attention
in the medical schools at Paris. Sketches of these doc¬
trines were given by him in three papers contained in the
Memoirs of the Societe Medicale d'Emulation. The
doctrines were afterwards more fully developed in his
Trade sur les Membranes, which appeared in 1800. In the
notes to a small work, in which he gave in a condensed
form the lessons of Desault on the diseases of the urinary
passages, are found the germs of many of Bichat’s peculiar
views.
His next publication was the Recherches Physiologiques
sur la Vie et sur la Mort (1800), which consists of two
dissertations. In the first he explains his classification
of functions, and traces the distinction between the animal
and organic functions in all its bearings. In the second
he investigates the connection between life and the actions
of the three central organs, the heart, lungs, and brain.
But the work which contains the fruits of his most profound
and original researches is the Anatomie Generate, published
in 4 vols. 8vo in 1801.
Before Bichat had attained the age of eight-and-twenty
he was appointed physician to the Hotel Dieu, a situation
which opened an immense field to his ardent spirit of
inquiry. In the investigation of diseases he pursued the
same method of observation and experiment which had
characterized his researches in physiology. He learned
their history by studying them at the bedside of his
patients, and by accurate dissection of their bodies after
death. He engaged in a series of examinations, with a
view to ascertain the changes induced in the various organs
by disease, and in less than six months he had opened
above six hundred bodies. He was anxious also to deter¬
mine, with more precision than had been attempted before,
the effects of remedial agents, and instituted with this view
a series of direct experiments on a very extensive scale.
In this way he procured a vast store of valuable materials
for his course of lectures on the Materia Medica, the com¬
pletion of which was prevented by his death; but a great
part of the facts were embodied in the inaugural disserta¬
tions of his pupils. Latterly, he also occupied himself with
forming a new classification of diseases.
Bichat commenced a new work on anatomy, in which