BIBULUS. The best-known of those who bore this surname, which belonged to the Geiis Calpurnia at Rome, was Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, elected consul with Julius Czesar, 59 B.C. He was the candidate put forward by the aristocratical party in opposition to L. Lucceius, who was of the party of Cassar; and bribery was freely used (with the approval, says Suetonius, of even the rigid Cato) to secure his election. But he proved no match for his able colleague. He made an attempt to oppose the agrarian law introduced by Caasar for distributing the lands of Campania, but was overpowered and even personally ill-treated by the violence of the mob. After making vain complaints in the senate, he shut himself up in his own house during the remaining eight months of his consulship, taking no part in public business beyond fulminating edicts against Caesar s proceedings, which only provoked an attack upon his house by a mob of Cossar s partizans. When the interests of Caesar and Pompey became divided, Bibulus supported the latter, and joined in proposing his election as sole consul (52 B.C.) Next year he went into Syria as proconsul, and claimed credit for a victory gained by one of his officers over the Parthians, who had invaded the province, but which took place before his own arrival in the country. After the expiration of his government there, Pompey gave him the command of his fleet in the Ionian Sea. Here also he proved himself utterly incapable ; distinguishing himself chiefly by the cruel burning, with all their crews on board, of thirty transport vessels which had conveyed Csesar from Brundisium to the coast of Epirus, and which he had captured on their return, having failed tj prevent their passage. He died soon afterwards of fatigue and mortification. By his wife Portia, daughter of Cato, afterwards married to Brutus, he had three sons. The two eldest were murdered in Egypt by some of the soldiery of Gabinius ; the youngest, Lucius Calpurnius Bibulus, fought on the side of the republic at the battle of Philippi, but surrendered to Antony soon afterwards, and was by him appointed to the command of his fleet. He died while governor of Syria under Augustus.
BICHAT, Marie-François-Xavier, a celebrated French anatomist and physiologist, was born at Thoirette in the department of Ain, in 1771. His father, who was himself a physician, was his first instructor. He entered the College of Nantua, and afterwards studied at Lyons. In mathematics and the physical sciences he made rapid pro gress. Becoming passionately fond of natural history he ultimately devoted himself to the study of anatomy and surgery, under the guidance of Petit, chief surgeon to the Hotel Dieu at Lyons. He resumed for a time his early studies, restricting himself, however, within such limits as did not interfere with his medical pursuits. Petit soon discerned the superior talents of his pupil, and, although the latter had scarcely attained the age of twenty, employed him constantly as his assistant. The revolutionary disturb ances compelled Bichat to fly from Lyons and take refuge in Paris about the end of the year 1793. He there became a pupil of the celebrated surgeon Desault. One day, volunteering to supply the place of an absent pupil who was to have recapitulated the lecture of the day before, he acquitted himself so admirably that Desault was strongly impressed with his genius; and from that time Bichat became an inmate in his house, and was treated as his adopted son. For two years he actively participated in all the labours of Desault, prosecuting at the same time his own researches in anatomy and physiology. The sudden death of Desault in 1795 was a severe blow to Bichat. His first care was to acquit himself of the obligations he owed his benefactor, by contributing to the support of his widow and her son, and by conducting to a close the fourth volume of Desault s Journal de Chirurgie, to which he added a biographical memoir of its author. His next object was to .reunite and digest in one body the surgical doctrines which Desault had published in various periodical works. Of these he composed, in 1797, the book entitled CEuvres CJdrurgicales de Desault, ou Tableau de so, Doctrine, et de sa Pratique dans le Traitement des Maladies Externes, a work in which, although he professes only to set forth the ideas of another, he develops them with the clearness and copiousness of one who is a master of the subject. He was now at liberty to pursue the full bent of his genius, and, undisturbed by the storms which agitated the political world, he directed his full attention to surgery, which it was then his design to practise. We meet with many proofs of his industry at this period in the Recueil de la Societe Medicate d Emulation, an association of which Bichat was one of the most active members. In 1797 he began a course of anatomical demonstrations, and his success encouraged him to extend the plan of his lectures, and boldly to announce a course of operative surgery. Bichat s reputation was now fully established, and he was ever after the favourite teacher with the Paris students. In the following year, 1798, he gave, in addition to his course on anatomy and operative surgery, a separate course of physiology. A dangerous attack of haemoptysis interrupted for a time these heavy labours ; but the danger was no sooner past than he plunged into new engagements with the same ardour as before. He had now scope in his physiological lectures for a fuller exposition of his original views on the animal economy, which excited much attention in the medical schools at Paris. Sketches of these doc trines were given by him in three papers contained in the Memoirs of the Societe Medicate $ Emulation. The doctrines were afterwards more fully developed in his Traite sur les Membranes, which appeared in 1800. In the notes to a small work, in which he gave in a condensed form the lessons of Desault on the diseases of the urinary passages, are found the germs of many of Bichat s peculiar views.
His next publication was the Recherches Pliysiologiques sur la Vie et sur la Mart (1800), which consists of two dissertations. In the first he explains his classification of functions, and traces the distinction between the animal and OKganic functions in all its bearings. In the second he investigates the connection between life and the actions of the three central organs, the heart, lungs, and brain. But the work which contains the fruits of his most profound and original researches is the Anatomie Gentrale, published in 4 vols. 8vo in 1801.
Before Bichat had attained the age of eight-and-twenty he was appointed physician to the Hotel Dieu, a situation which opened an immense field to his ardent spirit of inquiry. In the investigation of diseases he pursued the same method of observation and experiment which had characterized his researches in physiology. He learned their history by studying them at the bedside of his patients, and by accurate dissection of their bodies after death. He engaged in a series of examinations, with a view to ascertain the changes induced in the variovis organs by disease, and in less than six months he had opened above six hundred bodies. He was anxious also to deter mine, with more precision than had been attempted before, the effects of remedial agents, and instituted with this view a series of direct experiments on a very extensive scale. In this way he procured a vast store of valuable materials for his course of lectures on the Materia Medica, the com pletion of which was prevented by his death; but a great part of the facts were embodied in the inaugural disserta tions of his pupils. Latterly, he also occupied himself with forming a new classification of diseases.
