214 NATURE AND LIFE. 



far in this untried path, for he died on the 3d of Ther- 

 midor, of the year X., aged hardly thirty-two. Thus the 

 labors that might have impressed a new tendency upon 

 therapeutics at the very beginning of the century, were 

 checked by the death of the great man who had conceived 

 the idea of them, and who would surely have successfully 

 pursued their difficult execution. In truth, this surprising 

 genius was too much in advance of his time. Among the 

 physicians who came immediately after him, either no one 

 saw the importance or else no one felt himself strong 

 enough to attempt the realization of Bichat's design. 

 Science had yet to await for more than fifty years those 

 investigations which destroyed empiricism, and established 

 therapeutics firmly and definitely. It is to Claude Bernard, 

 in great part, that we owe this reform. 



II. 



Empiricism is so tenacious of life, tradition so mighty, 

 that when Bernard undertook his first labors in scientific 

 therapeutics, and explained its principles, twenty years 

 ago, he had to struggle against the opposition of the most 

 distinguished doctors. These physicians among whom 

 we may name Trousseau, with a mind of marvelous sup- 

 pleness and brilliancy, gifted with the brightest artist-fac- 

 ulties, which for him took the place of those of the sage 

 persistently maintained that the action of remedies can- 

 not be reduced to fixed laws, and that vital operations 

 elude any exact ascertainment. Claude Bernard has dis- 

 proved these unphilosophic assertions. He has unfolded, 

 in many essays, the methods which permit a rigorous so- 

 lution of the problems of therapeutics, and he has joined 

 example with precept in his investigations as to curare, 

 oxide of carbon, ether, nicotine, the alkaloids of opium, 

 etc. His methods are the application of the rules of Car- 

 tesianism itself. " We must analyze," in his own words, 



