Xavier Bichat: The Founder of Histology

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A Surgeon's Son from the Provinces

Marie François Xavier Bichat was born in 1771 in Thoirette, a small village in the Jura region of France. His father was a physician, and from an early age Xavier was immersed in medicine. He studied surgery in Lyon under the celebrated anatomist Marc-Antoine Petit, proving himself a student of exceptional quickness and precision. He was barely twenty years old when the French Revolution tore the country apart — and with it, the entire structure of French medical education. For Bichat, the upheaval would become an opportunity.