1880—1882 335 



with barbarity by a Police Magistrate. In order to study the 

 digestive properties of gastric juice, it had occurred to him to 

 collect it by means of a cannula, a sort of silver tap which he 

 adapted to the stomach of live dogs. A Berlin surgeon, M. 

 Dieffenbach, who was staying in Paris, expressed a wish to 

 see this application of a cannula to the stomach. M. Pelouze, 

 the chemist, had a laboratory in the Rue Dauphine; he offered 

 it to Claude Bernard. A stray dog was used as a subject for 

 the experiment and shut up in the yard of the house, where 

 Claude Bernard wished to keep a watch on him. But, as the 

 treatment in no wise hindered the dog from running about, the 

 door of the yard was hardly opened when he escaped, cannula 

 and all. 



**A few davs later," writes Claude Bernard in the course of 

 an otherwise grave report concerning the progress of general 

 physiology in France (1867), *'I was still in bed, early one 

 morning, when I received a visit from a man who came to tell 

 me that the Police Commissary of the Medicine School Dis- 

 trict wished to speak to me, and that I must go round to see 

 him. I went in the course of the day to the Police Com- 

 missariat of the Rue du Jardinet; I found a very respectable- 

 looking little old man, who received me very coldly at first and 

 without saying anything. He took me into another room and 

 showed me, to my great astonishment, the dog on whom I had 

 operated in M. Pelouze 's laboratory, asking me if I confessed 

 to having fixed that instrument in his stomach. I answered 

 affirmatively, adding that I was delighted to see my cannula, 

 which I thought I had lost. This confession, far from satisfy- 

 ing the Commissary, apparently provoked his wrath, for he 

 gave me an admonition of most exaggerated severity, accom- 

 panied with threats for having had the audacity to steal his 

 dog to experiment on it. 



'*I explained that I had not stolen his dog, but that I had 

 bought it of some individuals who sold dogs to physiologists, 

 and who claimed to be employed by the police in picking up 

 stray dogs. I added that I was sorry to have been the involun- 

 tary cause of the grief occasioned in his household by the mis- 

 adventure to the dog, but that the animal would not die of it; 

 that the only thing to do was to let me take away my silver 

 cannula and let him keep his dog. Those last words altered 

 the Commissary's language and completely calmed his wife 

 and daughter. I removed my instrument and left, promising 



