CLAUDE BERNARD 



37 



looking forward to a time when treatment should 

 be based on science, not on tradition. Medicine, 

 he says, is neither science nor art. Not science — 

 Trouverait-on aiijourcT hui un seul mddecin raisonn- 

 able et instruit osant dire quil prdvoit d'une manure 

 certaine la marche et Pisstte dune maladie ou I'ejfet 

 dune remede ? Not art, because art has always 

 something to show for its trouble : a statue, a 

 picture, a poem — Le rnddecin artiste ne crde rien, 

 et ne laisse aucune ceuvre a" art, a moins d' appliquer 

 ce titre a la gudrison du malade. Mais quand le 

 malade meurt, est-ce dgalement son oeuvre ? Et 

 quand il gudrit, peut-il distinguer sa part de celle de 

 la nature ? 



To Claude Bernard, experiments on animals for 

 the direct advancement of medicine seemed a new 

 thing : new, at all events, in comparison with the 

 methods of some men of his time. He was only 

 saying what a great English physiologist said in 

 1875 t0 tne Royal Commission : — 



It is my profound conviction that a future will 

 come, it may be a somewhat distant future, in which 

 the treatment of disease will be really guided by 

 science. J ust as completely as mechanical science has 

 come to be the guide of the 7nechanical arts, do I 

 believe, and I feel confident, that physiological science 

 zvill eventually come to be the guide of medicine and 

 stirgery. 



Anyhow, lecturing a quarter of a century ago on 

 diabetes, his special subject, Claude Bernard spoke 

 out his longing to compel men into the ways of 



