Bichat, Marie-François-Xavier

Bichat was born in a small village near Lyons, the first child of the physician Jean -Baptiste Bichat and his wife (and cousin), Jeanne-Rose (sometimes identified as Marie-Rose). The couple had three other children, a son and two daughters. Jean-Baptiste Bichat was a medical graduate of the University of Montpellier in southern France, where the philosophy of vitalism was strongly advocated throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century. Vitalism held that the phenomena of living bodies are caused by specific properties inherent in living matter, and that these properties are radically different from those of nonliving matter. That view was reflected in all of Xavier Bichat's writing, and it is likely that he was first introduced to it by his father.