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. 
aT. 
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 T'rousseau, 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 unfo led, 
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, 


