The fifth man in this quintette of geniuses which I am presenting to you to-day was Francis Xavier Bichat, who was born in France in 1771, and died in 1802. Although he was thirty-one years old at his death, his career was so phenomenal, almost meteoric, that it deserves to be held up as showing what one can do in the early period of his life, if he will but work. As one reads of his originality and talent one is led almost insensibly to compare them with those of some of the world's famous musicians who, also, have died in early manhood after giving to the world their immortal works, e. g., Schubert, Mozart and Mendelssohn. Bichat was the son of a physician and applied himself early to medical studies in Nantes, Lyons, Montpellier and finally in Paris, where he became the pupil and trusted friend of Desault, then the greatest Parisian surgeon. When Desault died, in 1795, this young man began lecturing for him, at the age of twenty-four. He displayed a wonderful, almost feverish scientific activity, more particularly in the direction of general and pathological anatomy. He was the originator of the phrase which he made famous: "Take away some fevers and nervous troubles, and all else belongs in the domain of pathological anatomy." Coming upon the stage shortly after Morgagni left it, he was able by his genius, his logical acumen and his graces of speech and manner, to give an attractiveness and importance to this subject which it had hitherto lacked. It was his great service to more clearly differentiate closely related diseased conditions and to insist upon a study of post-mortem appearances in connection with previously observed clinical phenomena. He also established the tendency of similar tissues to similar anatomical lesions. In fact our view of what we call general tissue systems we in reality owe to him, since without use of the microscope he distinguished twenty-one kinds of tissue, which he studied under the head of general anatomy, while he held that descriptive anatomy had to do with their various combinations. To Bichat was largely due the overthrow of purely speculative medicine because he placed facts far in advance of theories and ideas. Books he said are or should be merely "memoranda of facts." That he made many such memoranda will appear from the fact that before his untimely death he had published nine volumes of essays and treatises, nearly all bearing on the general subject of anatomy, normal and morbid. He also had not only his limitations but his faults. He strangely denied the applicability of so-called physical laws to body processes, he minimized the importance of therapeutics, and he sought to place the vitalistic system upon a realistic basis. Nevertheless he set an example not only for the young men of France, but of all times and climes, which should be often held up before them.