CLAUDE BERXARD 567 



CLAUDE BERXARD 



By D. WRIGHT WILSON 



OXP] hundred years ago, in a little village in eastern France, there 

 was born of humble parentage a man who was to become one of 

 the greatest plrysiologists of France and of the world. Though a pioneer 

 in a field despised and looked down upon at the time, he was to make 

 discoveries which were of fundamental importance to physiology and 

 medicine and were to influence the whole general aspect of biology 

 toward certain questions. 



Claude Bernard was born in the little village of Saint Julien, 

 department of Rhone, July 1?, 1813. His father was a small land 

 owner of the district and earned a comfortable living from the fruit of 

 his vineyard. Bernard later came into possession of the estate and 

 spent his vacations there, working out of doors among his trees and 

 vines. He describes it thus : 



My dwelling is on the hill slopes of Beaujolais which look toward the Dombe. 

 The Alps give me my horizon and when the air is clear I 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 which flanks it on the left; a great 

 rarity in a land in which they stub up even the coppices in order to plant vines. 



Bernard and a sister were the only children. He was apparently a 

 bright child, for the cure made him a choir boy and taught him Latin. 

 Later, he went to the small Jesuit college at Yillefranche and from 

 there went to Lyons, where he soon left school to enter a practical 

 pharmacy. At first he received only board and lodging for his services, 

 but soon his manual dexterity won for him a small salary. He remained 

 here two years, but his employers mode of business made him sceptical 

 of medical and pharmaceutical practise of the day as shown by the 

 following story related by Sir Michael Foster. 



As was usual at that epoch the clients of the shop, especially the old women 

 of the outlying vilages, made a constant demand for a syrup which seemed to 

 cure everything; and Bernard, to his astonishment, found that this favorite syrup 

 was compounded of all the spoilt drugs and remnants of the shop. Whenever 

 Bernard reported a bottle of stuff had gone wrong, ' ! Keep it for syrup, ' ' re- 

 plied the master; "that will do for making syrup." 



