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Se PATHFINDERS OF PHYSIOLOGY 



fraying his expenses by tutorage. The literary longings began to 

 fade as the young savant waxed warm with his medical studies. 

 Anatomy and physiology claimed the greater portion of his attention 

 and energy. His remarkable manual dexterity, in which he was par- 

 ticularly fortunate, rendered his dissections of singular completeness 

 and value. The chaotic condition of physiology of the time (1840) 

 served to awaken in his mind a desire to solve problems by direct 

 ^ experimental appeal to nature. He was one of the first to ^employ 

 animal experimentation, or vivisection. In 1841 he attracted the 

 attention of the great IMajendie, then the leading physiologist of 

 France, also Professor of Medicine in the College of France. Ma- 

 jendie is described as being in manner abrupt and even rough and 

 rude. At first he took little notice of Bernard, his new interne, but 

 was soon impressed with the young man*s dexterity and skill. One 

 day while Bernard was busy at his dissecting, Majendie blurted out: 

 "I say, you, there. I take you as my preparateur at the College of 

 France." And it was not long before the master had occasion to say 

 in his gruff way as he left the class-room: "You are a better man 

 than I am." Bernard's career as physiologist may be said to date 

 from this appointment in 1841. 



Claude Bernard was of a retiring, silent nature, difficult to under- 

 stand and often misunderstood. Michael Foster described him as 

 "tall in stature, with a fine presence and a noble head, the eyes full 

 at once of thought and kindness ; he drew the look of observers upon 

 him wherever he appeared. As he walked the streets passers-by 

 might be heard to say, *I wonder who that is ; he must be some dis- 

 tinguished man.* " 



The Productive Period — Bernard had shown the precious metal of 

 his genius before he was far on in his twenties. Nearly all of his great 

 achievements were accomplished during the period of his life which 

 ended with 1860. The essential results of his two greatest discoveries, 

 the glycogenic function of the liver and the vaso motor nerves were 

 gained prior to 1850, before he was 37 years old. He is illustrative of 

 Osier's declaration that the world's best and most important work 

 was mainly done by young men, for further example: Mor- 

 gagni's germinal idea, which made him the father of modem path- 

 ology, came to him when he was scarcely twenty; Auenbrugger 

 began his work upon percussion when he was under twenty-five ; Laen- 

 nec undertook the problem of constructing a system of auscultation in 

 his early twenties and published his book when he was not yet thirty- 

 five. 



All significant work in medicine has had its basis in observation, 

 not theory. Men have been prone to theorize too much and to observe 

 too little. For two thousand years the learned men of Europe de- 

 bated as to whether this or that place was the site of ancient Troy, or 

 whether there ever was such a place at all. It remained, however, for 

 a retired man of business, Schliemann, to decide the question. He 

 said, "Let us go and see," and, at the expense of a few thousand 

 pounds, he went and found Troy and Mycenae and revealed or dis- 

 covered the whole matter — "The most tremendous and picturesque tri- 

 umph of the scientific method over mere talk and pretended historic 

 learning," says Ray Lancaster, "which has ever been since human 



