D'ARSONVAL, ARSÈNE. - French physician, physiologist, and physicist, b. at Laporcherie (Haute Vienne) on 8 June 1851, d. there on 3 Dec. 1940.
Introduced to physiology by Bernard, he was his and Brown-Sequard’s preparator and taught physiology at the Collège de France. He studied and introduced high-frequency currents into therapy (“darsonvalisation”). The rectangular-frame galvanometer, a compensation calorimeter, and several other instruments commonly used in electrophysiology are named after him. The French regard him as the founder of biological physics.
D'A. appears to have been an agnostic: he regarded the “scientific spirit” and the “religious spirit” as two independent variables that could coexist, but without mutual interference.
BIBL.: Works: Exposé de titres et travaux scientifiques, Parigi 1888 (in collaboration with E. J. Marey and others); Traité de physique biologique, ivi 1901-1903. Studies: L. Chauvois, D'A., soixante-cinq ans à travers la science, Parigi 1937; L. Delhomme, De Cl. Bernard à d'A., ivi 1930.