Francois Xaviar Bichat, that immortal genius whose name will survive as long as medicine exists, was born November 11, 1771, at Thoirette France, where his father practiced as a country doctor.  After receiving an excellent education at the university, he started for Lyons to commence his medicinal studies in 1791, under the preceptorship of the celebrated M.A. Petit, but shortly afterwards, owing to the siege of Lyons, left that place and went to Paris where Desault who had remarked his talents, took him in as an associate in his works.  Here Bichat displayed that remarkable activity and tremendous capacity for labor, that made him seem to execute herculean tasks, with ease.  At the death of Desault (1795), he would not leave his master's widow, whom he regarded as his second mother.  Determined to pay Desaults memory a debt of gratitude, he set to work and finished the fourth volume of his master's Journal de Chirurgie, containing his researches in anatomy, and collecting all the notes and observations in them, published the complete "O Euvres Chiragicales de Desault" which appeared in 1798, and 1799.  Turning now to his own studies, he abandoned surgery for physiology, published his "Traite des Membranes."  A year afterwards appeared his great work "Recherches sur la vie et la mort" a work that has been translated into many tongues.  Again in the next year, he published his "Anatomie Generale."  At twenty-eight he was famous and ward physician to the Hotel Dieu.  Here he plunged into work with his usual feverish ardour and fell desperately in love with pathological anatomy, making over six hundred complete post-mortems with his own hands in a few short months.  But this superhuman mental and physical exertion was too much for an overtaxed frame and despite the desperate efforts of Corvisart to save him, the spirit of Francois Xaviar Bichat was driven from its earthly tenement by typhoid fever, on July 22, 1802.  He passed away in the arms of his two well-beloved friends and pupils, Roux and Esparrou with his head reclining on the lap of madam Desault... (The Cincinnati Lancet and Clinic, v.55, 1835)