Xavier Bichat, “General Anatomy: Applied to Physiology and Medicine”, 1801.

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5 years ago

Xavier Bichat, “General Anatomy; Applied to Physiology and Medicine”, 1801 was a nonfiction medical book. The book is famous in that Xavier Bichat uses the term “tissues”, making it an historic first coining of “tissues“. An “anatomy” is not an “eidonomy” (external morphology); anatomy is internal morphology. The “macroscopic”, anatomy of “organs” was already known before Xavier Bichat. The anatomy of Xavier Bichat makes no use of “microscopy” to view cells. Thus, Xavier Bichat’s anatomy “mesoscopic”; the “tissues” are smaller anatomically than “organs”; and the “tissues” are larger anatomically than “cells”. Xavier Bichat’s level of “mesoscopic resolution” is a listing 21 types of “tissues” as follows:

1. cellular tissue, 2. animal-nervous, 3. organic-nervous, 4. arterial tissue, 5. venous tissue, 6. exhalation-texture, 7. gland-absorbent, 8. osseous tissue, 9. medullary tissue, 10. cartilaginous tissue, 11. fibrous tissue, 12. fibrocartilaginous tissue, 13. animal-muscular, 14. organic-muscular, 15. mucous tissue, 16. serous tissue, 17. synovial tissue, 18. glandular tissue, 19. dermoid tissue, 20. epidermoid tissue, 21. pilous tissue.

The human body as four parts: 0. external, macroscopic, “eidonomy”, 1. internal, macroscopic “organs”, 2. internal, mesoscopic “tissues”, and 3. internal, microscopic “cells” was the view of Xavier Bichat’s, “General Anatomy: Applied to Physiology and Medicine”, 1801. This blog post was to place Xavier Bichat as the first to coin the term “tissues” along with listing 21 types.