Francois-Xavier Bichat, his school and his fellows: The eponymous anatomists of the Consulate and of the Empire
Seance of wednesday 18 february 2026 (Napoléon et les chirurgiens)
DOI number : 10.26299/rx4v-vy58/emem.2026.08.14
Abstract
At the dawn of the 19th century, the exercise of the art of healing and that of surgery in particular remained intrinsically linked to anatomical practice. While physiology remains in its infancy, research in anatomy still affects almost the entire field of progress in medical science. On the evening of the Revolution, in France, he had two standards: a legend of the past, Félix Vicq d'Azyr and a leading figure for the future, embodied by Xavier Bichat.
Student and spiritual son of Desault, father of the vitalist theory and inventor of the method of anatomo-clinical correlation, Bichat overturns the dogmas of descriptive anatomy and places it in the universe of disease which disrupts its structures, forms and relationships: he thus lays the foundations of the so-called pathological anatomy. He unfortunately died at the age of 30, like a warrior struck down in battle, following an anatomical puncture. He leaves his students and his unfinished work with a writing dated 1796, which transcends them: the manifest of emulation.
Responding to the call of this text, his fellows, still MD students, founded on Frimaire 12th An XII, the Anatomical Society of Paris, which would give the inaugural work of their master, a considerable posterity. The first president of the Society was M-G. Dupuytren and its secretary, R. Laennec. Among the other members we find, among others: Broussais, Cabanis, Roux and Pelletan. Then came A. Boyer, first surgeon to the Emperor and A. Béclard, who married the daughter of the Dean Dubois, obstetrician to the Empress. All these men, often from modest backgrounds and moved to Paris, were successively first winners of the internship competitions, then prosectors and finally chair holders and very often, members of the Institute. All of them have left their name to one or more eponymous anatomical structures in the human body. Becoming famous doctors, they treated the Emperor, his family and the dignitaries of the Empire. By this way, all of them thus embodied the principle of elevation through excellence in Science and the Emperor awarded their merits by conferring on them, in addition to the Legion of Honor, nobiliary favors. Among them, he also distinguished his former companions during the Egypt campaign, including E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, author of the anatomical philosophy which prefigured a century before Darwin, the principle of the evolution of species, which was violently opposed, in the tribune of the Academy of Sciences, by G. Cuvier, the father of comparative anatomy. Finally, Napoleon did not forget the anatomists of his Kingdom of Italy, including A. Scarpa, from Pavia, and P. Mascagni, from Florence, both of whom he decorated with the Iron Crown. As a singular coincidence in History, the last caregiver at his bedside during his exile in Saint Helena was a fellow of the Florentine master. As a poor doctor, and as an anatomist without discovery, F. Antommarchi so became the man of a single dissection, but what a famous dissection: that of the body of the deceased Emperor, the wax mask of whom he left us as a ultimate anatomical legacy.
In 1809, the Paris Anatomical Society was dissolved under the presidency of Laennec, due to lack of members, because all the young health officers of the Empire, subject to conscription, had left Paris to treat the wounded soldiers on distant battlefields. They so dispersed their rich anatomical knowledge to the confines of Europe, in each of the countries conquered by the Grande Armée. At the Restoration, J. Cruveilhier revived the Anatomical Society, whose fruitful work he continued until the fall of the Second Empire. F. Magendie left the Society and, through his controversial vivisection experiments, he opened the field of functional anatomy and so created the new domain of experimental physiology. As for F. Portal, he was to anatomy what Talleyrand was to politics: student of Buffon, former tutor to the Dauphin, physician to the Count of Provence, then to Pope Pius VII and to the Chancellor Cambacérès, he crossed all regimes while immutably keeping his chair of descriptive anatomy. During the Hundred Days, he had the strategic wisdom to accompany Louis XVIII to Ghent and, his favor being so definitively assured, he was able to found in 1820 the Royal Academy of Medicine of which he was the first president.
When Corvisart announced Bichat's death to Bonaparte First Consul, he wrote to him: "No one has ever done so much, so well and in such a short time." Flaubert then added: "Medical science was born in Bichat's apron." To do them justice in front of History, let us have the objective wisdom to also add the apron of the multitude of fellows whom his spirit and his example had lastingly inspired.
Student and spiritual son of Desault, father of the vitalist theory and inventor of the method of anatomo-clinical correlation, Bichat overturns the dogmas of descriptive anatomy and places it in the universe of disease which disrupts its structures, forms and relationships: he thus lays the foundations of the so-called pathological anatomy. He unfortunately died at the age of 30, like a warrior struck down in battle, following an anatomical puncture. He leaves his students and his unfinished work with a writing dated 1796, which transcends them: the manifest of emulation.
Responding to the call of this text, his fellows, still MD students, founded on Frimaire 12th An XII, the Anatomical Society of Paris, which would give the inaugural work of their master, a considerable posterity. The first president of the Society was M-G. Dupuytren and its secretary, R. Laennec. Among the other members we find, among others: Broussais, Cabanis, Roux and Pelletan. Then came A. Boyer, first surgeon to the Emperor and A. Béclard, who married the daughter of the Dean Dubois, obstetrician to the Empress. All these men, often from modest backgrounds and moved to Paris, were successively first winners of the internship competitions, then prosectors and finally chair holders and very often, members of the Institute. All of them have left their name to one or more eponymous anatomical structures in the human body. Becoming famous doctors, they treated the Emperor, his family and the dignitaries of the Empire. By this way, all of them thus embodied the principle of elevation through excellence in Science and the Emperor awarded their merits by conferring on them, in addition to the Legion of Honor, nobiliary favors. Among them, he also distinguished his former companions during the Egypt campaign, including E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, author of the anatomical philosophy which prefigured a century before Darwin, the principle of the evolution of species, which was violently opposed, in the tribune of the Academy of Sciences, by G. Cuvier, the father of comparative anatomy. Finally, Napoleon did not forget the anatomists of his Kingdom of Italy, including A. Scarpa, from Pavia, and P. Mascagni, from Florence, both of whom he decorated with the Iron Crown. As a singular coincidence in History, the last caregiver at his bedside during his exile in Saint Helena was a fellow of the Florentine master. As a poor doctor, and as an anatomist without discovery, F. Antommarchi so became the man of a single dissection, but what a famous dissection: that of the body of the deceased Emperor, the wax mask of whom he left us as a ultimate anatomical legacy.
In 1809, the Paris Anatomical Society was dissolved under the presidency of Laennec, due to lack of members, because all the young health officers of the Empire, subject to conscription, had left Paris to treat the wounded soldiers on distant battlefields. They so dispersed their rich anatomical knowledge to the confines of Europe, in each of the countries conquered by the Grande Armée. At the Restoration, J. Cruveilhier revived the Anatomical Society, whose fruitful work he continued until the fall of the Second Empire. F. Magendie left the Society and, through his controversial vivisection experiments, he opened the field of functional anatomy and so created the new domain of experimental physiology. As for F. Portal, he was to anatomy what Talleyrand was to politics: student of Buffon, former tutor to the Dauphin, physician to the Count of Provence, then to Pope Pius VII and to the Chancellor Cambacérès, he crossed all regimes while immutably keeping his chair of descriptive anatomy. During the Hundred Days, he had the strategic wisdom to accompany Louis XVIII to Ghent and, his favor being so definitively assured, he was able to found in 1820 the Royal Academy of Medicine of which he was the first president.
When Corvisart announced Bichat's death to Bonaparte First Consul, he wrote to him: "No one has ever done so much, so well and in such a short time." Flaubert then added: "Medical science was born in Bichat's apron." To do them justice in front of History, let us have the objective wisdom to also add the apron of the multitude of fellows whom his spirit and his example had lastingly inspired.