For various reasons, a shift was occurring in Bernard's scientific interests. The productive researcher was turning into a philosopher of science. Failing health after led him to spend more time at Saint-Julien, less time in the laboratory. Louis Pasteur would blame the unhealthy conditions here for his colleague's long illness. By odd coincidence, Bernard suffered apparently from chronic enteritis, with symptoms affecting the pancreas and the liver.
He was sceptical regarding statistics and did not anticipate the later usefulness that statistical techniques would achieve. He emphasised the milieu interieur, which the organism maintains constant in order to enable normal tissue function. The book brought new honours to Bernard, notably election to the French Academy of Sciences in and subsequently was made imperial senator for life. After the break-up of his marriage, he found some consolation in a platonic friendship with Marie Raffalovich, a handsome woman of Russian-Jewish origin, married to an Odessa banker living in Paris.
She attended his lectures and translated scientific works for him. After the separation of the Bernards, he became close to the Raffalovich house, where Rothschild sent him pheasants as presents, and Madame Raffalovich supplied him with the latest works by Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, and translated physiological works in Russian and German to him. Seven volumes of his letters from the years to are now in the archives of the Academie, and most of the important ones have been printed.
His friends included such literary figures as Hippolyte Taine, and the Goncourts, besides such scientists as Louis Pasteur and Marcelin Berthelot. Bernard's own experiments were taking new directions. The phenomena common to animals and plants formed the subject of lectures published posthumously. He also began research on fermentation. Until Bernard was always rather sickly, but the Franco-Prussian war of induced new energy to him and he resumed his intense research activity.
During his convalescence of , Bernard turned his attention to philosophy, and read and annotated the philosophical works of G. Tennemann and of Auguste Comte. Flouren's chair was transferred to the Sorbonne, and was awarded to Paul Bert, one of Bernard's most faithful pupils. Although he was only a mediocre lecturer, he was able to hold the attention of his audience by the novelty and vividness of his arguments and by the experiments that he improvised in the amphitheatre to support his statements. At the beginning of his career, Bernard's audiences had been composed almost exclusively of physicians and physiologists, especially foreigners; gradually, however, they became larger, more varied, and more fashionable.
Bernard was showered with honours in the final years of his life: His separation from his wife and the Franco-Prussian was affected him profoundly, but he took pleasure in long stays ate St. However, Bernard's health declined precipitously in the autumn of On New Year's Day he caught cold, and shortly after inflammation of the kidneys set in. Soon he was confined to his bed. Mme Raffalovich and her daughter nursed him, and students and friends gathered around; his daughter Tony stopped short of his threshold.
A travelling rug was laid over his legs, of which he is reported to have said: There was a national funeral, the first ever granted a scientist in France.
A statue of him was erected in his honour in his birthplace, St. Julien on the Rhone. Bernard was reputedly a very kind person, always ready to help his younger colleagues, a tolerant sceptic who stood out in a France where the hatred between the parties was prevailing.
Le Roman expérimental
Himself a convinced Orleanist, he was appointed imperial senator for life. Claude Bernard holds a peculiar position in the life sciences. Without exact methods, lacking the necessary equipment, equipped only with a few surgical instruments, the French physiologists approached their investigations rather by chancy methods. The fact that they still achieved numerous brilliant and important results, proves more than anything the great genius of some of them. The genius of Claude Bernard is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by the fact that he made his epoch-making discoveries during his lectures and demonstrations.
Few of the best equipped physiological laboratories in his time made more numerous and more brilliant contributions to physiological knowledge than the damp cellar serving as Bernard's laboratory. Despite his epoch-making contributions, Claude Bernard left no school, and as his results rested more on his personal brilliance than upon strict scientific principles, he was not able to prevent the decline of French physiology.
If it is immoral, then, to make an experiment on man when it is dangerous to him, even though the result may be useful to others, it is essentially moral to make experiments on an animal, even though painful and dangerous to him, if they may be useful to man. A theory is merely a scientific idea controlled by experiment.
Gosselin washed his after, but your pupil, Guyon, before this small operation. Olmsted in Claude Bernard, Physiologist. From a conversation between Bernard and Louis Pasteur around , when Pasteur had been severely attacked for his views on infection.
Bernard, Claude [WorldCat Identities]
This would be like trying to tell what happens inside a house by watching what goes in by the door and what comes out by the chimney. We really know very little, and we are all fallible when facing the immense difficulties presented by investigation of natural phenomena. The best thing, then, for us to do is to unite our efforts, instead of dividing them and nullifying them by personal disputes.
But each one of these particular truths is added to the rest to establish more general truths. In this fusion, the names of promoters of science disappear little by little, and the further science advances, the more it takes an impersonal form and detaches itself from the past. The experimenter, on the contrary, who always doubts and who does not believe that he possesses absolute certainty about anything, succeeds in mastering the phenomena which surround him, and in extending his power over nature.
How often must man have been and still must be wrong in this way! It even seems impossible absolutely to avoid this kind of mistake. We wish to draw from this experiment another general conclusion But above all one must observe. Before the experiment and between whiles, let your imagination wrap you round; put it right away from you during the experiment itself lest it hinder your observing power.
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine. Biography of Claude Bernard Claude Bernard "I consider the hospital the antechamber of medicine, it is the first place where the physician makes his observations. A selection of quotations by Bernard: Bernard showed that if glucose is injected directly into the blood it is eliminated by the kidneys while glucose is retained, and that gastric juice transforms sucrose into assimilable sugar.
Recherches anatomiques et physiologiques sur la corde du tympan. Annales medico-psychologiques, Paris, , 1: This illustrated textbook of surgery was reprinted as late as and translated into English, German, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish. Discovery of the digestive action of the pancreatic juice, especially its role in the digestion and absorption of fats. Reprinted, with translation, in Medical Classics, , 3: Recherches sur le curare. Thesis presented to the Faculty of Sciences for the doctorate in zoology. Or is it Washington Lemuel Atlee ?
This basic work on the application of experimental physiology to medicine contains, among others, his memorable work on glycogenesis and experimental diabetes, and catheterisation of the heart of a dog.
Product description
Written with Charles Huette. This atlas is one of the few works Bernard wrote on subjects other than physiology. It is handsomely illustrated with over hand-colored steel engravings drawn from life or cadaver dissection and covers a wide range of surgical procedures. Bernard showed that curare acted by stopping the transmission of impulses from motor nerves to voluntary muscles.
A series of lectures covering, among other subjects, the actions of poisons on the body, the physiology of toxic absorption, and the nature of toxic gases. He demonstrated in these experiments the susceptibility of the nerve-muscle preparation to a chemical pharmacological effect. Another of Bernard's scholarly textbooks, this work covers the physiology and pathology of blood and other body fluids.
Bernard was the first to describe an effect of the renal nerves on urine flow. Revue des deux mondes, , The work has appeared in many French editions since the first edition of English translation by Henry Copley Greene: With an introduction by Lawrence J. New York, Macmillan, This monograph is a landmark in the history of the development of anaesthesia, for Bernard did some basic work on the physiologic effects of anesthetic drugs, pointed out the dangers of such drugs, and advocated the use of pre-anaesthetic depressants such as morphine. As early as Bernard discovered that chloroform anaesthesia could be prolonged and intensified by the injection of morphine.
iTunes is the world's easiest way to organize and add to your digital media collection.
Johann Nepomuk von Nussbaum also observed this. English translation by B. High to Low Avg. Available for download now. Provide feedback about this page. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally. Amazon Inspire Digital Educational Resources. Amazon Rapids Fun stories for kids on the go.