Bernard, Claude

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BERNARD, CLAUDE

BERNARD, CLAUDE (1813–1878), French scientist.

Since his death in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, very few French scientists have become as famous as Claude Bernard. This fame, which triggered much interest among historians, had declined in the early twentieth century, but works by historians of science such as Mirko Drazen Grmek and Frederick Lawrence Holmes renewed the interest in and interpretation of Bernard's achievements.

Claude Bernard was born on 12 July 1813 in the small village of Saint-Julien, near Lyon, France. The son of a wine grower, he was educated at a Jesuit college and then moved to Lyon, where he studied medicine. At that time he also had some literary ambition. He wrote a play that met some success, but a meeting with the famous Parisian critic Saint-Marc Girardin persuaded him to carry on with his medical studies. By 1839 he was an intern and worked with François Magendie, a professor of physiology at the Collège de France. Soon after he became his assistant (préparateur). Although Bernard failed to pass the agrégation (the highest competitive examination for teachers in France) and thus was deprived of the prestigious status of agrégé, or professor, his position allowed him to conduct extensive research. He studied the pancreas and then discovered the glycogenic function of the liver (1848). In 1847 he was appointed supply or substitute teacher of Magendie, whom he succeeded as professor of medicine at the Collège de France (Leçons de physiologie expérimentale appliquée à la médecine, faites au College de France) in 1855–1856. During that time, he conducted research on the nervous system, the effects of toxic and medicinal substances, and animal heat regulation (Leçons sur la physiologie et la pathologie du système nerveux, 1858). He also studied the internal organization of the body and he coined the expression milieu intérieur (1857; interior milieu), which remained one of his major achievements. From the 1860s on, Bernard led a successful career despite fragile health. The emperor Napoleon III (r. 1852–1871) supported his work and provided his protégé with two fully equipped laboratories—the best possible conditions for the pursuit of research. The emperor was also interested in making science more visible, and thus made Bernard senator in 1869. Bernard had previously been elected to the Academy of Science (1854) and to the Academy of Medicine (1861).

Bernard was the most influential French scientist of his day when he compiled his Rapport sur les progrès et la marche de la physiologie générale en France (1867; Report on the state and progress of physiology in France). In 1868 he was appointed professor of general physiology at the Natural History Museum and subsequently was elected to the Académie française. His predecessor was the monogenist and anti-Darwinian Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens (1794–1867), and his successor was Joseph-Ernest Renan (1823–1892). His inaugural lecture to Academicians was moderate, published under the title La science expérimentale (1789; The experimental science). In it, he sought to reduce the oppositions between materialism and spiritualism. It is to be noted that in the years preceding his death Bernard showed a growing interest in religion. The fact that he had been the emperor's protégé did not alter his celebrity, and when he died in 1878, the then young Third Republic organized a national funeral that included a church service.

Bernard is perhaps best known for his Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale (1865; Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine). His claims about experimental physiology have been largely endorsed by successive generations of medical students. The reason for this success lies in the fact that he did not limit himself to technical explanations or descriptions of his work. Once experiments had been carried out and repeated successfully, Bernard sought general principles both of the methodology of experimentation and of physiology itself and its place in the interpretation and understanding of life. Thus, his papers on experimentation and lab discoveries are coupled with other writings more typical of the philosophy of medicine and general biological considerations. Bernard's reflections also cover his own discipline and the methods of scientific investigation as well as experimentation itself. This eventually paved the way for considerations of ethics, a crucial point in current clinical research.

D. G. Charlton's classic book, Positivist Thought in France during the Second Empire, 1852–1870 (1959), considered Claude Bernard as a true friend of positivism. Later works propose a much more nuanced interpretation: Bernard is seen as part of the positivist culture of his time but should be sharply distinguished from the legacy of Auguste Comte (1789–1857). For instance, Bernard's classification of sciences has very little to do with Comte's own. In addition, Bernard regarded philosophers, including Comte, with quiet disdain. He was highly suspicious of "making a specialty of generalizations" (Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale) and there is some evidence that Comte is implicitly designated as one of those responsible for that attitude. Finally, Bernard's interpretation of science appears much more modest than that of Comte, who developed a kind of metaphysics of scientific process.

Bernard's interpretation of human life—as the experience of the body submitted to physical and chemical laws—raised criticism because of the fundamental determinism it implied. His attacks against vitalism opened cracks in the model of interpretation of life that remained dominant well beyond the first half of the nineteenth century. Thus, Bernard's theories were at the center of many debates, some of which have not yet ended. This is why Bernard continues to be a subject of interest in the early twenty-first century; not so much because he is a representative of science and its success but because the critical analysis of his writings contributes to the understanding of epistemology past and present.