Bureaucracy,Liberalism and the Body in Post-Revolutionary France: Bichat's Physiology and the Paris School of Medicine

This paper has been developed from part of a seminar paper which was usually entitled: “Bureaucracy, Liberalism and the Body in Post-Revolutionary France”, read in 1976 – 8 in Manchester, Keele, Edinburgh and Cambridge. I would like to thank the audiences for their suggestions. I am grateful to those colleagues who commented on the text of that talk, especially Karl Figlio, Ken Caneva, Barbara Haines, Jonathan Harwood, Ludmilla Jordanova, Bill Luckin, Dorinda Outram and Roy Porter. Particular thanks to W. R. Albury and Barbara Haines for their stimulating and exemplary studies of subjects close to mine.

Albury W. R. , “Experiment and explanation in the physiology of Bichat and Magendie”, Studies in the history of biology, i (1977), 47–131. This excellent paper, which includes translations of MSS by Bichat, should be read by anyone who wants more detail on the physiology of Bichat than I have given here. Albury's paper, which appeared after I had written the first draft of this present study, describes with great clarity the differences between the presuppositions of Bichat and Magendie, which I have tried to explain. The recent study by Lesch J. E. , “The origins of experimental physiology and pharmacology in France, 1790 – 1820: Bichat and Magendie” (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1977) surveys much of the physiology and social context discussed here. Other perceptive accounts of French physiology in the early nineteenth century include: Temkin O. , “The philosophical background of Magendie's physiology”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xx (1946), 10–35, and “Materialism in French and German physiology of the early nineteenth century”, ibid ., 322–7; Schiller Joseph , Claude Bernard et les problèmes scientifiques de son temps (Paris, 1967); Arène A. , “Essai sur la philosophie de Xavier Bichat”, Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, xxvi (1911), 753–825; Entralgo L. P. , “Sensualism and vitalism in Bichat's Anatomie générale”, Journal of the history of medicine, iii (1948), 47–64; and several essays by Georges Canguilhem in his Études d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences (Paris, 1968). For Michel Foucault's analysis of Bichat's place in medicine, see his The birth of the clinic (London, 1973), or preferably, the original French edition of 1963. For more general accounts of epistemological breaks and the mode of analysis see his The order of things (London, 1970), and The archaeology of knowledge (London, 1972). Bichat's biography and his context are well-described and documented in Maurice Genty, “Xavier Bichat (1771–1802)”, in Huard Pierre (ed.). Biographies médicales et scientifiques, X VIII siècle (Paris. 1972).

To appear in History of science.

Lesch , op. cit. (ref. 1).

Albury , op. cit. (ref. 1).

These generalizations are based chiefly on the Recherches (1800) and vol. i of the Anatomie générale (1801). I have used the 1822 (Magendie) edition of the first and the 1821 (Béclard) edition of the second. The key passage on the relation of the functional systems to the basic tissues is in the Anatomie générale (1821), i, 90–99.

The attitude to experiment is best discussed in Albury (ref. 1), where the key text is translated. This was previously printed, in part, by Arène and discussed in my brief and facetious, “Xavier Bichat, body and mind”, (University of Minnesota) Biomedical Library bulletin, xxix (Jan. – Feb. 1973).

Lesch , op. cit. (ref. 1), 188–208. Gelfand Toby , “The training of surgeons in eighteenth century Paris and its influence on medical education” (Ph.D. thesis, The Johns Hopkins University, 1973, published by Greenwood Press as Professionalising modern medicine. Paris surgeons and medical science and institutions in the eighteenth century (Westport, Conn., 1980)). Temkin O. , “The role of surgery in the rise of modern medical thought”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xxv (1951), 248–59.

Bichat , Recherches (1822), 253–4.

See for example, Kay J. P. , The physiology, pathology and treatment of asphyxia (London, 1834), 18–19.

For a few notes on how Bichat's tissue doctrines were modified in France, see Pickstone J. V. , “Globules and coagula: Concepts of tissue formation in the early nineteenth century”, Journal of the history of medicine, xxviii (1973), 336–56.

Bichat , Anatomie générale (1821), 92.

ibid., 91.

Pickstone , op. cit. (ref. 10).

Haines Barbara , “The inter-relations between social, biological and medical thought, 1750–1850: Saint-Simon and Comte”, The British journal for the history of science, xi (1978), 19–35, p. 29. This essay previews a monograph on Saint-Simon which will be published by the British Society for the History of Science.

Wolin S. S. , Politics and vision: Continuity and innovation in western political thought (Boston, 1960).

The particular report which came to my notice was: Webber R. J. , “The national classification of residential neighbourhoods; and introduction to the classification of wards and parishes”, Technical Paper TP23, Planning Research Applications Group, Centre for Environmental Studies, 62–65, Chandos Place, London WC2 (1977). It might be worth exploring the links between this kind of social analysis and the traditions of positivism in French sociology. A similar study of ecology, concentrating on the notion of ‘vegetation’ could also be useful. French ecology and French geography were closely linked so that these two suggested studies would, undoubtedly, overlap; they would probably also reach back to Bichat, at least through Comte and Saint-Simon. The notion of ‘vegetation’ is similar, in some ways, to that of tissue: Both refer to visible organizations of undefined extent.

Magendie F. , “Quelques idées générales sur les phénomènes particuliers aux corps vivans”, Bulletin des sciences médicales publiée au nom de la Société médicale d'Emulation (de Paris), iv (1809), 145–70, pp. 165–6. For a good, discussion of this important paper see Albury W. R. , “Physiological explanation in Magendie's manifesto of 1809”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xxxxviii (1974), 90–99.

Bichat , Recherches, 138.

ibid., 138.

The biographical sources for Bichat are given in ref. 1. On the Paris School of Medicine see Ackerknecht E. H. , Medicine at the Paris hospital, 1794 – 1848 (Baltimore, 1967). On the idéologues, see Picavet Fr. , Les idéologues (Paris, 1891); Gusdorf Georges , La conscience révolutionnaire. Les idéologues (Paris, 1978); Moravia S. , Il pensiero degli idéologues (Florence, 1974); Staum Martin S. , Cabanis: Enlightenment and medical philosophy in the French Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1980); and Jordanova L. J. , “The natural philiosophy of Lamarck in its historical context” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1976). All these works deal with connections between philosophy and medicine, but see especially, Moravia S. , “Philosophie et médecine en France à la fin du XVIII ^e siècle”. Studies on Voltaire, lxxxix (1972), 1089–151.

Lesch , op. cit. (ref. 1), 146–7; Genty , op. cit. (ref. 1), 235–7.

Richerand Anthelme , Nouveaux élémens de physiologie (1st edn, Paris, 1801; 10th edn, 3 vols, Paris, 1833 – 35), i, ‘Preface’; Genty , op. cit. (ref. 1), 248, 252.

For lists of the various editions see Genty , op. cit. (ref. 1).

On the Directory, the most useful general history is Lyons Martyn , France under the Directory (Cambridge, 1975). See also Woronoff Denis , La république bourgeoise de Thermidor à Brumaire, 1794 – 1799 (Paris, 1972), and Lefebvre Georges , The Directory (London, 1964), from the French of 1937.

On the continuities of organization across the French Revolution see de Tocqueville Alexis , The ancien régime and the French Revolution (London, 1966), first published 1856.

See Albrow Martin , Bureaucracy (London, 1970), 17.

See Gelfand , op. cit. (ref. 7).

See Ackerknecht , op. cit. (ref. 20). On the attitudes of liberal revolutionaries; Hahn R. , The anatomy of a scientific institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666 – 1803 (Berkeley, 1971). On the army medical services, Vess D. , Medical revolution in France, 1789–1796 (Gainsville, Florida, 1975).

Bichat , Recherches (1822), 206–18. Manuel F. , “From equality to organicism”, in his Freedom from history (London, 1972), 221–41.

Bichat , Recherches (1822), 2.

There is an excellent discussion of “The neo-classical way of death” in Honour Hugh , Neo-classicism (London, 1968), 146–59.

Lyons , op. cit. (ref. 24), 161. The contrast can be illustrated by a quotation from Lenin, reproduced by Wolin , op. cit. (ref. 15), 425: Bureaucracy versus democracy is the same thing as centralism versus [local] autonomism, it is the same organizational principle of revolutionary political democracy as opposed to the organizational principle of the opportunists of Social Democracy. The latter want to proceed from the bottom upwards … The former proceed from the top, and advocate the extension of the right's and powers of the centre in respect of the parts.

Tocqueville De , op. cit. (ref. 25), e.g. 180–4, 226.

Lyons , op. cit. (ref. 24), 107–8.

Douglas Mary , Natural symbols. Explorations in cosmology (2nd edn, London, 1973), chs 2 & 4, esp. pp. 50–51. In the course of this work I have been stimulated and helped by anthropological researches, notably by Douglas's Natural symbols, and though this study did not begin as a test of her hypothesis, it might properly be regarded as providing a confirming instance. Douglas's account of group and grid, of the systems of social control and the degree of elaboration of language codes, offers a matrix for the comparison of different social forms and for the prediction of their ideological forms (or vice versa). By most standards, certainly judged against later French liberalism, the society of Directory intellectuals, certainly that part of it which included Bichat and his fellow professionals, was high group and high grid (they were well integrated into a well differentiated social structure). If I read Natural symbols correctly, they would be expected to value truth and duty as cardinal virtues; to experience themselves as active agents, internally differentiated, responding to rules; and to value classical art forms. “This would be the [category] for Aristotle.” The analysis would seem equally accurate for the cosmology of Bichat, and indeed, for certain aspects of his physiology (pp. 50–51).

See, for example, Ackerknecht E. H. , Rudolf Virchow. Doctor, statesman, anthropologist (Madison, 1953), and Temkin O. , “Metaphors of human biology”, in Stauffer R. C. (ed.), Science and civilisation (Madison, 1949), 169–94.

On Saint-Simon, see refs 14, 15 and 29 above; Gouhier H. , La jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation de positivisme (3 vols, Paris, 1933 – 41); Manuel F. E. , The prophets of Paris (Boston, 1962); and Leroy Maxime , Histoire des idées sociales en France, de Babeuf à Tocqueville, ii (Paris, 1962).

Revue fran&çaise, i (1828), 232, and vii (1829), 265.

For an outline history of individualisme in France, see ch. i of Steven Lukes, Individualism (Oxford, 1973), esp. p. 6.

Royer-Collard H. , Revue fran&çaise , iii (1828), 28–66, esp. 35 – 46. For biographical details see the Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales. The Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes by Barbier A-A. (3rd edn, Paris, 1879), iv, gives him as the author of the physiology articles in vols i – xv of the Revue fran&çaise.

ibid., 39.

ibid., 44.

In a second paper I hope to explore the socio-political principles built into the newer style of physiology.