Page:A Treatise on the Membranes in General, and on Different Membranes in Particular.djvu/13



was born at Thoirette, department of Jura, November 14, 1771, of Jean Baptiste Bichat, doctor of medicine, and of Marie Rose Bichat.

At an early age his parents sent him to the college of Nantua, to pursue his classical studies. The love of labour, his respect for his instucters, his attachment to his school-fellows, then evinced in young Bichat one of those rare beings, who already intimated what in time would be the morals and merit of him, whom we already admire as a pupil.

In 1788 he entered the seminary of St. Yrénée at Lyons, there to finish his studies by a course of philosophy.

In the two schools where he was a pupil, Bichat constantly distinguished himself by his mildness of disposition, his modesty, and his success. Every year he won several prizes at the college of Nantua, and sustained public exercises at Lyons in physics and mathematics, with the highest distinction.

The revolution then paralizing every kind of instruction, Bichat quitted Lyons, returned to his family, and received from his father the first elements of anatomy; but his predominant taste for mathematics led him again to Lyons, where he continued his favourite pursuit, at the same time following his anatomical course, and visiting the great hospital. At length the revolutionary tempest transforming this brilliant city into a vast field of desolation and death, he sought, in the school