Marie-Francois Xavier Bichat (1771-1802), French pathologist and founder of modern histology. Bichat noted that various organs consist of several components, or 'tissues', and set about documenting 21 of them (such as connective, muscle and nervous tissue). Eschewing the aid of a microscope, his observations were made during numerous post-mortems. His work had much influence on medical science, forming a link between the 'organ pathology' of Morgagni and the later 'cell pathology' of Virchow.