D'ARSONVAL, ARSÈNE - Enciclopedia Cattolica, Vol. IV, p. 725

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

D'ARSONVAL, ARSÈNE. - French physician, physiologist, and physicist, born at La Porcherie (Haute Vienne) on 8 June 1851, died there on 3 December 1940.

Introduced to physiology by Claude Bernard, he served as assistant to both Bernard and Brown-Séquard and taught physiology at the Collège de France. He studied and introduced into therapy high-frequency currents (d’arsonvalization). Named after him are the rectangular-coil galvanometer, a compensation calorimeter, and several other instruments commonly used in electrophysiology. The French consider him the founder of biological physics.

D’A. appears to have been an agnostic: he regarded “scientific spirit” and “religious spirit” as two independent variables that could coexist without interference.

BIBL.: Works: Exposé de titres et travaux scientifiques, Paris 1888 (in collaboration with E. J. Marcy and others); Traité de physique biologique, ibid. 1901–1903. Studies: L. Chauvois, D’A., soixante-cinq ans à travers la science, Paris 1937; L. Delhoume, De Cl. Bernard à D’A., ibid. 1939.