Bernard, Claude

born July 12, 1813, Saint-Julien, France

died Feb. 10, 1878, Paris

French physiologist.

He taught at several major French institutions and was named a senator in 1869. He discovered the role of the pancreas in digestion, the glycogenic function of the liver in carbohydrate metabolism, and blood-supply regulation by the vasomotor nerves. He helped establish the principles of experimentation in the life sciences, including the need for a hypothesis. His concept of the internal environment of the organism led to the present understanding of homeostasis. Bernard also studied the effects of such poisons as carbon monoxide and curare. He was awarded the grand prize in physiology three times by the Académie des Sciences.

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▪ French scientist

Introduction

born July 12, 1813, Saint-Julien, France

died Feb. 10, 1878, Paris

 French physiologist known chiefly for his discoveries concerning the role of the pancreas in digestion, the glycogenic function of the liver, and the regulation of the blood supply by the vasomotor nerves. On a broader stage, Bernard played a role in establishing the principles of experimentation in the life sciences, advancing beyond the vitalism and indeterminism of earlier physiologists to become one of the founders of experimental medicine (medicine, history of). His most seminal contribution was his concept of the internal environment of the organism, which led to the present understanding of homeostasis—i.e., the self-regulation of vital processes.

Early training.

      Bernard's father, Pierre, was a winegrower; his mother, Jeanne Saulnier, was of peasant background. When Claude was very young, his father failed in a wine-marketing venture and tried to make ends meet by teaching school. Despite his efforts, the family never prospered, and when he died, the survivors were left in debt. Educational opportunities were scarce for a poor winegrower's son in the France of Louis XVIII. The boy studied Latin with the local priest and then was enrolled in a Jesuit-conducted school at Villefranche, where no natural science was taught. At 18 Bernard ended his secondary schooling at Thoissey without a diploma and was apprenticed to an apothecary in a Lyon suburb.

      Bernard's days were spent in menial tasks relieved by errands to a veterinary school or, on his rare times off, by visits to a theatre. He wrote a playlet, La Rose du Rhône, now lost, and then began writing Arthur de Bretagne, a historical drama in five acts. His employer was not pleased, however, and the apprenticeship came to a halt, the youth returning home in July 1833. By November 1834 he was in Paris with the completed manuscript of Arthur de Bretagne and a letter of introduction. The literary critic Saint-Marc Girardin read his play and advised him to try medicine instead of playwriting.

      Bernard enrolled that same winter in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris and, in due course, was admitted as an extern in the hospitals. Outwardly reserved and even shy at that time, he had an inner strength that was to overcome poverty and discouragements. Of 29 students passing the examination for the internship, Bernard ranked 26th. Serving in Paris hospitals were the celebrated doctors Pierre Rayer and François Magendie (Magendie, François), and Bernard studied under the latter at both the Hôtel-Dieu and the Collège de France. Magendie noticed Bernard's skillful dissections and took him on as a research assistant.

      Bernard became involved in Magendie's research on spinal nerves. His first publication dealt with the chorda tympani (a branch of the facial nerve), while his medical dissertation was devoted to the function of the gastric juice in nutrition (1843). These maiden publications were prophetic, for much of his later research concerned neurology and metabolism. Failing in the examination that would have qualified him to teach in the medical school, he collaborated with others in research on digestion and on the exotic poison curare, thus treading two paths that would lead him to fame. He was rather old at the age of 31 to be content with a research assistantship, however, and resigned the position late in 1844. Left in financial straits, he turned his thoughts again toward medical practice.

      To save his research career, a friend arranged a marriage of convenience for him with Marie-Françoise Martin, daughter of a Paris doctor. The marriage brought him a dowry of 60,000 francs but was destined to be painfully unhappy. Their separation was to follow his election to the French Academy late in life.

Research on the pancreas and the liver.

      In 1847 Bernard became Magendie's deputy at the Collège de France. This period was marked by a veritable explosion of discoveries, beginning in 1846, when Bernard solved the mystery of the carnivorous rabbits. Puzzled one day by the chance observation that some rabbits were passing clear—not cloudy—urine, just like meat-eating animals, he inferred that they had not been fed and were subsisting on their own tissues. He confirmed his hypothesis by feeding meat to the famished animals. An autopsy of the rabbits yielded an important discovery concerning the role of the pancreas in digestion: (digestion) the secretions of the pancreas broke down fat molecules into fatty acids and glycerin. Bernard then showed that the principal processes of digestion take place in the small intestine, not in the stomach as was previously believed.

      His work on the pancreas led to research on the liver, culminating in his second great discovery, the glycogenic (glycogen) function of the liver. In 1856 Bernard discovered glycogen, a white starchy substance found in the liver. He found that this complex substance was built up by the body from sugar and served as a storage reserve of carbohydrates that could be broken down to sugars as needed, thereby keeping the sugar content of the blood at a constant level. Bernard's discovery showed that the digestive system not only breaks down complex molecules into simple ones but also does the opposite, building up complex molecules from simpler ones. Simultaneously, he was nearing his third great achievement—explanation of the regulation of the blood supply by the vasomotor nerves. He discovered in this regard that the vasomotor nerves control the dilation and constriction of blood vessels in response to temperature changes in the environment. For example, in cold weather the blood vessels of the skin constrict in order to conserve heat, while in hot weather they expand to dissipate excess heat. This control mechanism, like the glycogenic functions of the liver, illustrates how the body maintains a stable internal environment in the midst of changing external conditions—a fundamental phenomenon known as homeostasis.

      Bernard also conducted important studies on the effects of such poisons as carbon monoxide (carbon monoxide poisoning) and curare on the body. He showed that carbon monoxide could substitute for oxygen and combine with hemoglobin, thereby causing oxygen starvation. His experiments with curare showed how this dread poison causes paralysis and death by attacking the motor nerves, while having no effect on the sensory nerves. He demonstrated that, because of this selectivity, curare could be used as an experimental tool in differentiating neuromuscular from primary muscular mechanisms.

Recognition and later work.

      Within less than a decade, from obscurity in the shadow of Magendie, he had risen to a commanding position in science. In 1854 a chair of general physiology was created for him in the Sorbonne, and he was elected to the Academy of Sciences. When Magendie died in 1855, Bernard succeeded him as full professor at the Collège de France. No laboratory had been provided for Bernard at the Sorbonne, but the French emperor Napoleon III, after an interview with him in 1864, remedied the deficiency, at the same time building a laboratory at the Museum of Natural History of the Jardin des Plantes. In 1868 Bernard left the Sorbonne to accept a newly established professorship in general physiology at this museum.

      Magendie's empirical method of conducting experiments without a guiding hypothesis was by then out of date, partly as a result of his own discoveries. Bernard's historic role was to demonstrate the experimenter's need for a guiding hypothesis to be either confirmed or refuted by the results.

      For various reasons, a shift was occurring in Bernard's scientific interests. The productive researcher was turning into a philosopher of science. Failing health after 1860 led him to spend more time at Saint-Julien, less time in the laboratory. Bernard suffered apparently from chronic enteritis, with symptoms affecting the pancreas and the liver. By way of compensation, the enforced leisure left him time for reflection, out of which would come his masterpiece, Introduction à la médecine expérimentale (1865; An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine).

      This work was planned as a preface, if a very long one, to a work of greater magnitude, never completed. Bernard's aim in the Introduction was to demonstrate that medicine, in order to progress, must be founded on experimental physiology. The other points in his argument are that (1) the physical and chemical sciences provide the foundation for physiology, although it is not reducible to them; (2) the notion of “vital force” does not explain life; (3) vivisection is indispensable for physiological research; and (4) biology depends on recognizing that the processes of life are mechanistically determined by physico-chemical forces. Still germane for modern science is his presentation of the concept of the milieu intérieur, or “internal environment,” of the body.

      The book brought new honours to Bernard, notably election to the French Academy in 1868. His friends included such literary figures as Ernest Renan, Hippolyte Taine, and the Goncourts, besides such scientists as Louis Pasteur and Marcellin Berthelot.

      The most renowned of the students trained by Bernard were Albert Dastre, Paul Bert, and Arsène d'Arsonval. Bert succeeded Bernard in the Sorbonne when the latter transferred to the Museum of Natural History in 1868. Bernard's own experiments were taking new directions. The phenomena common to animals and plants formed the subject of lectures published posthumously. He also began research on fermentation. His findings were published after his death by Berthelot and, because they conflicted with Pasteur's views, cast a cloud over the microbe hunter's memory of his late colleague.

      Bernard's health had declined precipitously in the autumn of 1877. On New Year's Day he caught cold, and shortly afterward inflammation of the kidneys set in. Soon he was confined to his bed. At his death Bernard was accorded a funeral arranged and financed by the government, the first ever granted to a scientist in France.

Reino Virtanen Ed.

Additional Reading

J.M.D. Olmsted, Claude Bernard, Physiologist (1938), is the fullest biography; it may be supplemented by J.M.D. Olmsted and E. Harris Olmsted, Claude Bernard & the Experimental Method in Medicine (1952, reissued 1961); Reino Virtanen, Claude Bernard and His Place in the History of Ideas (1960); and Frederic Lawrence Holmes, Claude Bernard and Animal Chemistry: The Emergence of a Scientist (1974), treating his work during the period 1842–48.

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