Claude Bernard Biography

Claude Bernard (July 12, 1813 – February 10, 1878) physiologist. He was born in Saint-Julien, France. The top representative of the French physiology of the 19th century. His life was dedicated to studying the nervous regulation of salivary secretion, pancreatic digestion, and glycogenic liver function. He is admired for having discovered vasomotor innervation and creating the concept of internal secretion. His contributions to experimental pharmacology are also salvageable.

Bernard at nineteen entered as a clerk in a pharmacy in Vaise, a suburb of Lyon. He liked literature so he wrote a drama entitled Arthur de Bretagne, he went to Paris; but then he started studying medicine, leaving literature aside. At first, he had the guidance of the physiologist François Magendie, who was a trainer, and soon gave proof of his genius. In 1843 he could already demonstrate the glycogenic function of the liver. He was an assistant to Magendie and professor of physiology at Collège de France. In the year of 1853, he obtained the title of doctor of science with the thesis Investigations about a new function of the liver, considered as a producing organ of sugary matter.

The following year he was a professor of experimental medicine at the Collège de France. Years later, and thanks to the knowledge acquired, he wrote Introduction to the study of experimental medicine (1865) allowed him to be part of the French Academy; this year he was entrusted with the chair of general physiology of the Sorbonne Natural History Museum, and in 1869 he was appointed member of the Imperial Senate of Napoleon III. In 1870 his intellectual vitality was affected by a kidney disease contracted because of the cold and humidity of his laboratory.

This French defended the determinism linked to neo-vitalism. He also studied, in addition to hepatic glycogenesis, the sympathetic nervous system and poisons. Among his works are Leçon sur la physiologie expérimentale appliquée a la médecine (1856), Les propriétés des tissus vivants (1866) and Leçon Sur Les phenomènes de la vie (1878).

In broad strokes, his works advocated naturalistic principles and thus generated a great influence that he exerted on the naturalist movement, mainly in Zola. Bernard establishes the rules of medicine that is true science and method, must have a solid foundation. For hi medicine must be like physics and chemistry, a science that undergoes an experimental method. But experience is not proven simply by the facts, without being guided by a precise conviction; rather, it must be rigorous and complete experimentation. So, the philosophical and theological yoke is excluded, admitting a personal scientific authority.

Thus, Bernard says, the hypotheses will encourage discoveries and experimentation serves as a guide. Émile Zola developed in his thinking of naturalist novelist Bernard’s famous scientific premises; his essay The experimental novel represents the attempt to apply the principles of physiology to a conception of art. Unfortunately, he died on February 10, 1878.

He is remembered for being one of the referents of experimental physiology of the nineteenth century, and, at the same time, one of the most illustrious thinkers of the time in Europe. The medicine had many advances in an anomaly that affects the sympathetic nerves of the face, it was called Claude Bernard-Horner syndrome.

Similarly, he contributed to the development of therapeutics, diabetes, indications of bleeding, detoxification by carbon monoxide through mechanical ventilation, the treatment of anemia with iron lactate, the decrease in body temperature through physical means, treatment of alcohol intoxication, morphine applications, the effects of carbon dioxide, intravenous administration of physiological serum, cardiopulmonary resuscitation techniques, among others.