BERNARD, CLAUDE. - Physiologist, b. at St-Julien (Rhône) on 12 July 1813, d. at Paris on 10 Feb. 1878. Of humble origin, he began his youth as a simple pharmacy clerk. Later, having earned a degree in medicine, he was appointed assistant and then became the successor of the celebrated physiologist F. Magendie. From 1854 he occupied the chair of physiology, created for him at the Collège de France, and from 1868 he taught general physiology at the Musée d'histoire naturelle in Paris. A member of the Academy of France and a senator of the empire, he had a host of students who became famous.
In the field of physiology B. is one of the principal figures of the past century and left his name linked not only to numerous and fundamental discoveries (glycogenetic function of the liver, vasomotor action of the nervous system on the walls of the arteries, digestive action of pancreatic juice, physiology of the chorda tympani and of the spinal nerve, genesis of animal heat, pharmacological activity of anesthetics and of curare, interdependence of the functions of the organs) but also to the introduction of an experimental methodology and of a theoretical framework that led to decisive advances in the science of life.
B. adheres substantially to determinism while expressly recognizing the insufficiency of physics and chemistry to give an adequate explanation of life (cf. De la physiologie générale, 306, 307, 321). Another aspect of his thought emerges from the following words spoken on the occasion of his entry into the Academy: "It would be an error to believe that the scientist, in order to follow the precepts of the experimental method, must reject every a priori conception and impose silence on his feeling so as to consult only the results of experience... His feeling, even unknown to himself, obeys the innate need that makes us irresistibly ascend to the origin of things, but his gaze remains bent toward nature because our idea becomes precise and luminous only by returning to the hearth of knowledge that is in us after having been reflected on the external world, just as a ray of light can illuminate us only by reflecting off the objects that surround us (La science expérimentale).
Among B.'s principal works are remembered: Leçons sur les propriétés des tissus vivants (1863); De la physiologie générale (1872); Leçons sur les phénomènes de la vie communs aux animaux et aux végétaux (1877-79); Leçons de pathologie expérimentale (1880). One must also remember, for their vast resonance on the formation of modern scientific thought: Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale (1865) and La science expérimentale (1878). All printed at Paris; the Pensées, Notes détachées, ed. L. Delhomme, ibid. 1937; Philosophie, ed. J. Chevalier, ibid. 1938.
Bibliography4 works
Enrico Vannini