Claude Bernard

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF PHYSIOLOGY THE JOHN G. CURTIS LIBRARY w

Preface

OOME may think that in the pages which follow too much space is given to an exposition of Claude Bernard's scientific work and too little to the details of his life as a man. Although the real life of every great man of science lies in the story of his scientific work and not in the tale of how he passed his days, we all of us wish to clothe the image which we have formed of a man whom we know by his writings only, with as many details as we can gather, of how he moved among his fellow-men, and what befell him on

IX

PREFACE

his path through life. And had I been able to do so, I would have added much to what I have written. But the details which can now be gained of Bernard's daily life are very scanty. I can only say that I have done my best ; and the little which I have been able to do has been made possible by the kindness of my friends, especially of Prof. A. Dastre, who now holds Bernard's chair at the Sor bonne ; of Prof. C. Richet, of the Ecole de Medecine ; and of Prof. W. Kiihne, of Heidelberg, who was once Bernard's pupil.

Cambridge, May 3, 1899.

Conclusion . . . ,

. 226

Index . . .

• 239

XI

THE traveller speeding southwards by the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean express, some little time before he reaches Lyons rushes through the station belonging to the town of Villefranche. Not far from that town — two or three leagues distant — lies the little village of Saint- Julien (Rhone), in which on July 12, 1 8 13, Claude Bernard was born. His father was, in common with most of his neighbours, the humble proprietor of a small estate chiefly planted with vines, and derived at least most of his income from making wine. The whole district was, and indeed still is, a wine-producing land ; it is part of the old province of Beaujolais, and the wine which it yields bears that name.

The little estate eventually came into Bernard's hands, and so soon as he could afford it, or at least in his later years, he used the paternal cottage as a summer residence during the vacations. Here he yearly renewed his strength by touch with his native earth, exchanging Paris for the simplicities of country life, and mingling quiet literary labours with the amusement of watching the vintage of his own wine. He thus himself describes his home :

" My dwelling is on the hill slopes of Beaujolais which look towards the Dombe. The Alps give me my horizon and when the air is clear I can catch sight of their white summits. At the same time I see spread out before me for two leagues the prairies of the Saone. The slope on which I dwell is surrounded on all sides by vineyards stretching away apparently without limit ; these would give the country a monotonous appearance were not this broken by wooded valleys and brooks running down from the mountains to the river. My cottage, situated though it is on a rise, is a very nest of verdure, thanks to a little wood which shades it on the right and to an orchard v/hich flanks it on the left ; a great rarity in a land in which they stub up even the coppices in order to plant vines."

In this quiet, out-of-the-way spot, the future physiologist began life as a member of a homely family, whose aspirations scarcely went beyond securing their daily bread. As a child he must have been bright, for the cure took him under his special charge, making him a choir boy and teaching him Latin. He afterwards was sent to the school or so-called college at Villefranche, directed by the Jesuits.

When he had learnt as much as his teachers could teach him at the college, he was sent to Lyons, with the view probably, in the first instance, of his completing his studies and obtaining the Baccalaureat. But his student career at Lyons could not have been a very lengthy one, for he soon entered into active life, exchanging the school for the shop. The reasons which led to this step cannot be ascertained, but they do seem to have been financial. The family, though humble, were not without resources. Claude appears to have been an only son, with one sister, who eventually married a neighbouring proprietor. The father seems to have been still aUve (though he is said to have died while Bernard was yet young) and not yet to have met with the reverses which subsequently crippled the family. Be it as it may, Bernard, somewhere in his teens, became engaged at Lyons in practical pharmacy, having obtained a situation with a pharmacist in the Faubourg de Vaise of that city. He received at first nothing more than his board and lodging for his services in the shop, though after some months, his manual dexterity, shown by the singular neatness of his " dispensing," was rewarded by a humble salary. Here for some time, probably for two years, Bernard spent most of his days as a pharmaceutical assistant, dispensing medicines, and carrying them to the clients, especially to the Veterinary School. What opportunities for pharmaceutical study he had does not appear ; but his patron's mode of conducting his business served to awake in him early the spirit of medical scepticism. As was usual at that epoch the clients of the shop, especially the old women of the outlying villages, made a constant demand for a syrup which seemed to cure everything ; and Bernard, to his astonishment, found that this favourite syrup was compounded of all the spoilt drugs and remnants of the shop. Whenever Bernard reported that a bottle of stuff had gone wrong, " Keep that for syrup," replied the master ; '' that will do for making the syrup."

No wonder that Bernard's mind turned with avidity to other things than pharmacy. In common with many of the young men of his time, he was filled with literary aspirations ; and he was particularly drawn towards the dramatic art. All his free evenings he spent at the play, at the Theatre des Celestins, and was moved to write himself a vaudeville comedy, entitled "La Rose du Rhone," which was not only accepted, but had a certain success on the boards, though it was never printed.

Encouraged by the result of this first effort, he set himself to the serious work of writing a historic piece in the conventional five acts, giving it at first the form of a tragedy in metre, but subsequently changing it to a prose drama. With this he determined to seek his fortune in Paris. He had in Lyons two friends, like himself, students and poor. All three thought that Lyons was too small a sphere for their abilities, all three determined that the proper place for them was Paris. They parted from each other at Lyons, giving each other the rendezvous in Paris, or as they called it, " la scene du Monde." And Bernard used to tell afterwards, in a joking spirit, how by chance they did later on meet together in the Place du Pantheon, in front of the well-known inscription *' Aux grands Hommes la Patrie reconnaissante " ! And though the omen did not hold so good for the other two as it did for Bernard, yet one became a Bishop, and the other a Director of Railways.

Bernard, with the help of the few francs which his little comedy had put in his pocket, started in the diligence for Paris, armed with his manuscript of " Arthur de Bretagne," carefully rolled up, and with a letter of introduction to the great critic Saint-Marc Girardin, which a professor in the Faculty of Letters at Lyons had given him. It was in 1834, and he was just about one and twenty years old.

Girardin, then Professor at the Sorbonne, received the young student kindly, and conscientiously read his manuscript. He saw (as indeed one may see now, for the drama was published in a fine edition after Bernard's death in 1886, by the Librairie Dentu of Paris), that the drama showed that the author possessed literary powers of no mean kind ; but he shrank from giving to the aspirant the hopes which might have been his due. Instead of encouraging him to devote himself to literature he bade him turn to something else by which to earn his bread, and court the Muses in his leisure moments only. "Y'ou have studied pharmacy," said he; "study medicine, you will thereby much more surely gain a livelihood."

Bernard followed the advice, and threw himself heart and soul into medical studies, living in the most frugal manner, supporting himself and paying the necessaryfees chiefly with the scant money which he earned by giving lessons ; for his family could spare him very little help, at most some trifling sums of money and an occasional hamper of country produce. Moreover his father died about this time, having met with reverses before his death. But a student's life in the Quartier Latin, at that time at all events, was not a costly affair. A garret, shared perhaps by a comrade, served as bedroom and study, and at times as kitchen, for when a gift came from the country home it was cooked and eaten in the *' appartement," with the help of utensils impressed or borrowed from the laboratory.

Bernard worked hard at all his medical studies, and in the tumult of the new ideas crowding in upon him his old literary aspirations soon grew faint and vanished.

Most especially did he devote himself to anatomy and physiology. In the former he recognised a branch of science, limited it is true in range, but one which had been studied with such rigour and exactitude as to have become a mental discipline of no mean value. He soon made himself master of the subject, acquiring a knowledge of it at once extensive and minute, while his conspicuous manual dexterity led to the dissections which he made being regarded by others as anatomical preparations of singular completeness and value. Moreover, he seems in these early days to have looked forward to the career of a surgeon as the one by which he might hope to gain a livelihood ; and to such a career anatomy was the most direct path. Physiology was at that timie in a very different condition from anatomy ; in place of light there v/as for the most part

II darkness, and in place of clear and distinct guidance, uncertainty and dubious discus-- sion. What Bernard thought of the most of the teaching of physiology of the time, we can gather from his utterances later on ; and we can confidently suppose that even in his early days he clearly distinguished between the science as it was taught and the science as it ought to be taught. If anatomy served to supply his intellectual appetite for exact and minute knowledge in the shape of concrete facts, physiology served to awaken in his mind the desire to solve problems by a direct experimental appeal to nature. He lived as a student in the Quartier Latin in a little " entresol " in the old *' Passage du Commerce Saint Andre des Arts," not far from the spot where Marat printed " L'Ami du Peuple," from the house in which Danton lived, and from that in which

Guillotin tried the value of his famous invention on the necks of sheep. In that little apartment he made his first attempts at experiments on living animals. A little later on he, in partnership with a fellow student, Lasegue, opened a humble experimental laboratory in the old Rue Saint-Jacques, nearly opposite the College de France, his purpose in doing so being, apparently, partly to gain some money by fees, but partly, and perhaps chiefly, to obtain ampler and more convenient means for carrying on his own budding researches. Alas, the enterprise was not successful. Only some halfdozen students availed themselves of the opportunity offered. The fees never brought enough to pay the rent and the cost of the rabbits employed, and the little laboratory was soon closed.

Nor in his more strictly professional efforts did Bernard at first attract attention. Retiring, thoughtful, with his mind already bent on problems to be solved, awkward in manner, and wholly removed from the desire so common to others to appear better than he really was, he did not impress either his comrades or the authorities with his power.

To the former, indeed, except in the dissecting-room, he appeared somewhat idle and inattentive. They were for the most part unable to criticise their teachers. Their intellectual activity was chiefly receptive ; it rarely went beyond the task of carefully listening to the words which fell from the professorial chair, and treasuring them in their memories to be reproduced at .the appointed time in the examination room. He, on the contrary, seems to have begun early to ponder over the questions which were treated of in the lectures ; he soon detected flaws in his teachers' reasoning, and thus speedily beginning to doubt the value of the teaching, paid but a listless attention to expositions and discussions, the weakness of which became more and more clear to him as time went on. Such a spirit, though it may bear admirable fruit in the end, is not very profitable at the schools. Possibly, moreover, the young student, quiet and reserved as he seemed, had within him not a little intellectual pride, which tempted him to neglect beyond measure instruction which seemed to him of dubious value. Though in his examinations and otherwise he showed himself to be an able student, neither to his fellow students nor to his teachers did he seem one who was about to make a great mark.

In the fifth year of his studies, however, 15 his opportunity came to him. After serving as usual as " externe " at the Hospitals he was in 1839 appointed "interne"; and Providence ruled that he should be allotted to Magendie, who was then one of the Physicians to the Hotel Dieu.

Magendie, then the leading physiologist in France, held two offices. He was Physician to the Hotel Dieu, and Professor of Medicine at the College de France.

The latter famous institution was founded by Francis I. in 1530, the year after the Treaty of Cambray, under the name of the College Royal or College des trots langues, the first chairs established being those of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. It was founded as a place of free learning with the desire to antagonise the more rigid and scholastic teaching of the University in the Sorbonne. The Royal Readers or Professors paid directly by the King were free to teach as they pleased within the subjects defined by their titles. The lectures were open to all without fees, and the whole object of the foundation was to encourage liberal and higher learning. At first the College had no fixed abode, the Professors delivering their lectures where they could ; indeed it was not until loiothat Louis XIIL, carrying out the promise made by Henry IV., began the construction of a building which, however, through various delays, was not completed and hence not used until 1636.

To the chairs of the three tongues, Francis L added those of mathematics, philosophy, and medicine, the first holder of that of medicine being the Florentine Guido Guidi, known as Vidus Vidius, who entered into the post in 1542. He was succeeded in 1550 by the great anatomist Jacques du Bois, better known by his Latin name of Jacobus Sylvius, one Beauvais intervening for three years.

Various other chairs were subsequently founded, and in the course of time numerous changes took place. Charles IX. founded in 1568 a chair of medicine, Henry III. founded one of surgery in 1575, and Henry IV. in 1595 one of anatomy, botany, and pharmacy, the second holder of which was Jean Riolan. By 1680, all these four chairs had come to be all equally devoted to medicine, surgery, botany, and pharmacy.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, however, great changes were made. The first chair of medicine became a chair of chemistry, held from 1865 onwards by the present eminent chemist Berthelot. The second chair of medicine became a chair of Natural History held by the illustrious Cuvier from 1799 to 1832.

And the chair of surgery became the one chair of Medicine held for some years by Laennec, and filled at the time of which we are speaking by Magendie. During all these years, however, the

*

principle of the College remained the same. The professors were at liberty to lecture without the restraints of a syllabus having an examination as its goal, the lectures were free to all who wished to hear, and the general idea that the place was devoted to higher study still maintained its sway.

Following the old tradition, it continued to be recognised that the duty of a Professor holding a chair in the College was not to give didactic lectures suitable to an ordinary student, but rather to use the post as an instrument of research, and to expound new ideas to those who were already advanced in their studies. Thus, for example, the lectures which Magendie delivered there in 1838-40 were afterwards published in the well-known work, " Phenomenes Physiques de la Vie." Carrying out the idea of research, there was allotted to the Professor of Medicine in a lower story of the building accommodation for research in the form of a dark unwholesome room called a laboratory. There was also provided for the Professor a frefarateur to assist him in the experiments with which he illustrated his lectures, or in those connected with his researches.

Bernard's first contact with Magendie was not promising. The professor, in the ward and in the laboratory at least, was in manner abrupt, even rough and rude. He took little notice of his new interne^ hardly even asking his name. After not many days, however, the conspicuously skilful way in which Bernard carried out the dissections which were entrusted to him made a very marked impression on his master ; and the story goes that one day, early in their intercourse, Magendie, on a sudden, called out roughly to Bernard, busy at a dissection, '' I say, you there, I take you as my preparateur at the College de France." Bernard was only too glad to accept the offer. There is some doubt as to whether he was not, during the first year, a mere voluntary assistant, but in any case, in 1841 he had become the official preparateur. Bernard's career as a physiologist may be said to date from then. Before proceeding any further, however, it will be desirable to form some idea of the state of physiology in Europe in general, and in France in particular at this epoch.

II

The Condition of Physiological Science BEFORE Bernard began his Labours

WHEN the physiologist to-day, knowing how dominant has been the influence of Germany on physiology in the present century, inquires what was the condition of physiology in Germany in about the year 1840, when Bernard joined Magendie, he is at once struck with the fact that the great German physiologists of the present century, Ludwig, Helmholtz, du Bois-Reymond, and Briicke, had at that time not commenced their labours. All the great work which these have done was done after that date ; their labours were contemporaneous with those of Bernard. The dominant physiological mind in Germany at that time was that of Johannes Miiller. That great man had in his earlier years devoted much time to definite physiological inquiry, especially into problems relating to the senses ; he was a great teacher of physiology, inspiring a love for the science and a true spirit of inquiry into it among his numerous pupils ; and he had written a masterly text book, his " Outlines of Physiology," the influence of which not only on his own countrymen but on others has been profound.

Johannes Miiller has been called a *' vitalist," and in a certain sense he v/as one. In his '* Outlines " he criticises the views of Reil " that the phenomena of life are the result, manifestation, or property of a certain combination of elements," and contends for the necessity of supposing the existence of an "organic or vital principle or force," " the action of which, however, is not independent of certain conditions." In judging Johannes Miiller's scientific attitude, it must be remembered that though a physiologist he was also a morphologist, and indeed, on the whole, more the latter than the former ; hence the organic principle was of more importance to him as a something determining the form of living beings than as an explanation of the phenomena presented by their activity. Moreover he was not a vitalist in the sense that he discouraged attempts to solve the problems offered by the actions of living beings by experiments based on the view that these were the outcome of physico-chemical agencies, or that he refused to admit a physico-chemical explanation when this could be shown to be adequately valid.

He was a vitalist only in the sense that he was theoretically of opinion that even when the physico-chemical analysis of vital phenomena had been pushed as far as it could, there would still remain a large residue which could not be explained through any such analysis however complete. And indeed the fact that his pupils, the great men mentioned above, were conspicuous by their efforts to solve physiological problems by such a chemico-physical analysis, shows clearly how much the master's vitalism, so far as physiology was concerned, was academic in nature, and that his influence as a teacher vv^as strongly in the direction of guiding the physiologist to attack his problems, by the same methods, and in the same spirit, that the chemist or the physicist attacked his.

The teaching and influence in the same direction of another gr^at man, E.

H. Weber, was even more decided and clear ; for he by the bent of his mind, no less than by fraternal ties, was not only a physiologist, but also a physicist.

The other strong men in Germany were also teaching and practising the same view. It is only necessary to mention the names of Henle, who though in the main an anatomist, was ever in search of physiological light, of Tiedemann, of Volkmann, of Vierordt, and of Bidder, to say nothing of the earlier labours of Theodore Schwann. The mark of all these was that they set about the solution of physiological problems in the same spirit in which the physicist or chemist sets about his ; to them the canons of scientific inquiry were the same for living as for non-living phenomena ; they only had recourse, and then with reluctance, to vitalistic explanations when their means of analysis proved impotent.

On the whole the dominant spirit of physiological inquiry in Germany was at that time very much- what it is now. The contrast between to-day and then lies chiefly in the paucity of opportunity for, and in the scarcity of men engaged in, experimental inquiry. Physiological laboratories, such as abound now, were then alm.ost unknown. But in this respect physiology was hardly in a worse condition than the other experimental sciences. Until Liebig began his career at Giessen, chemical laboratories as we now know them did not exist, and physical laboratories were a still later creation. Such things do not come until a call has been made for them. The call was being made for them and they soon came. The time at which Bernard began his work at Paris, was also the time for an independent development in Germany of opportunities for, and of the prosecution of, physiological research ; it was then that Ludwig and the other great German physiologists began their active careers.

In England the pursuit of physiology as a distinct science had but few followers, but these for the most part were treading the experimental path. The energetic expositions by Marshall Hall of the reflex actions of the nervous system, following up and extending as they did the earlier leadings of Charles Bell, were showing that this part of physiology, apparently the farthest removed from the sciences of inorganic nature, might be successfully studied by the same experimental methods.

John Reid, by his researches on the cranial nerves, was working in a more special and narrower way towards the same end. The sagacious Sharpey was teaching and was encouraging research in a spirit identical with that which governs physiological inquiry at the present day. And in the very year 1840, up to which we have so far traced Bernard's life, William Bowman made known to the world the results of those inquiries into the structure of muscle, and was about soon to make known the results of those other inquiries into the structure of the kidney, which still remain and will always remain models of histological research so directed as to throw light on physiological problems. One man only of mark, John Goodsir, and he more a morphologist than a physiologist, was teaching views in which a mystical tendency tempted the mind away from the more commonplace paths of simple observation and experiment.

In Italy, pressed down as she was at the time by political difficulties, and bound by ecclesiastical bonds, even less was being done, though, somewhat earlier, Spallanzani and Fontana had shown what could be achieved amid such adverse influences. Matteuci and others were, it is true, carrying out valuable researches on ordinary lines ; but no prominent mind was distinctly influencing general physiological thought.

Turning now to France itself v/e find a somewhat different condition of things. In that country, perhaps, even more than in other countries, patriotism has a tendency to manifest itself by a too exclusive attention to views put forward by native writers ; and this was in some ways especially the case at the epoch with which we are dealing. The influences v/hich, as we have just said, were becoming potent as regards physiological inquiry in Germany, and were also producing a marked effect in England, were, it would seem, felt but little in

France. The Frenchman who dealt with physiological questions was in the main influenced by his predecessors in his own land. And at that time the teachings of two men were in different ways especially powerful. The influence of the great Cuvier, who had mastered not only his subject but his opponents, was at that time supreme. He, like other morphologists, impressed with the impotence of the mechanical explanations offered as solutions of morphological problems, was led to depreciate, in like manner, any physico-chemical explanation offered as a solution of a physiological problem, and so became an ardent supporter of vitalistic views. His influence was, so to speak, from the outside ; yet it was a living influence and had only ceased to be such a few years before. Within the science of physiology itself the influence of Bichat,

3^ though it was that of a man who had long passed away, was exceedingly powerful. Bichat had laid hold of a great idea, one which rapidly spread from the land in which it was first expounded to other lands, and has in a most marked way helped to make physiology an exact science, the idea that the life of the body is the outcome of the combined and adjusted lives of the constituent tissues. By his brilliant exposition of this fruitful idea, he had opened up new ways for an exact experimental analysis of physiological phenomena. But in the detailed application of this idea, which in the flush of his youthful enthusiasm he strove to make complete and symmetric, undertaking a task the doing of which has needed, and still needs, the continued successive labours of many inquirers, he often went astray. Moreover, he so far remained under the influence of that vitalistic teachino- which in spite of what Haller had done, was still potent in the latter part of the eighteenth century, that he based his whole exposition on the idea that vital manifestations are the result of a conflict between vital forces on the one hand and physico-chemical forces on the other : he taught that these were essentially antagonistic, and that the latter have full play only when the former vanish in death. Had he lived longer he might perhaps have freed himself from the many conceptions which lessen the value of his great v/ork ; but he was taken away too soon, for he died at the early age of 31, just about the age at which Bernard began to publish. And, as often happens, the parts of his labours which were specious and misleading appeared the most tempting to many vv^ho followed him. These dwelt more on his view of organic sensibility and contractility to which his division into organic and animal life had led him, than on his conception that each tissue had its own life, and were more pleased with his epigrammatic definition of life as the sum of forces which resist death than with his laborious attempts to define the characters of the several tissues.

Bichat, by dividing the vital principle and distributing it over the several tissues, attributing to it different functions in different parts, in reality dealt a deathblow to the old vitalistic conceptions. But he did not live long enough to grasp the conclusion to which his labours were leading, and his successors for the most part stopped also where he himself had left off.