Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 26 - AUS-CHI.pdf/263

 BERNARD — BERNHARDT the most numerous. The town library contains about 85,000 volumes, but the historical relics have now been transferred to the new historical museum on the Kirchfeld, which also houses archaeological and ethnological collections. On the Kirchfeld the federal library is now being built. The strict aristocratic government of the town dates from 1295 and lasted till 1798. Population, 63,994. Literature.—Archiv. d. hist. Vereins d. Kant. Bern, from 1848. — Festschrift zur Iten Sdcularfeier d. Grmulling Berns, 1191. Bern, 1891.—Fontes Rerum Bernensium (to 1353), 8 vols. Bern, 1883-93.—Geiser. Geschichte d. Bernischen Verfassung, 1191-1491. Bern, 1888.—-Yon Mulinen. Bends Geschichte, 1191-1891. Bern, 1891.—Von Rodt. Bernische Stadtgeschichte. Bern, 1888.— Von Wattenwyl. Geschichte d. Stadt u. Landschaft Bern (to 1400), 2 vols. Schatfhausen and Bern, 1867-72. (w. A. B. C.) Bernard, Claude (1813-1878), French physiologist, was born on 12th July 1813, in the village of Saint-Julien, near Villefranche. He received his early education in the Jesuit school of that town, and then proceeded to the college at Lyons, which, however, he soon left to become assistant in a druggist’s shop. His leisure hours were devoted to the composition of a vaudeville comedy, La Rose du Rhone, and the success it achieved moved him to attempt a prose drama in five acts, Arthur de Bretagne. At the age of twenty-one he went to Paris, armed with this play and an introduction to Saint-Marc Girardin, but the critic dissuaded him from adopting literature as a profession, and urged him rather to take up the study of medicine. This advice he followed, and in due course became “ interne ” at the Hotel Dieu. In this way he was brought into contact with the great physiologist Magendie, who was physician to the hospital, and whose official “ preparateur ” at the College de France he became in 1841. Six years afterwards he was appointed his deputy-professor at the College, and in 1855 he succeeded him as full professor. Some time previously he had been chosen the first occupant of the newly-instituted chair of physiology at the Sorbonne. There no laboratory was provided for his use, but Louis Napoleon, after an interview with him in 1864, supplied the deficiency, at the same time building a laboratory at the Natural History Museum in the Jardin des Plantes, and establishing a professorship, which Bernard left the Sorbonne to accept in 1868—the year in which he was admitted a member of the Institute. He died in Paris on 10th February 1878, and was accorded a public funeral—-an honour which had never before been bestowed by France on a man of science. Claude Bernard’s first important work was on the functions of the pancreas gland, the juice of which he proved to be of great significance in the process of digestion ; this achievement won him the prize for experimental physiology from the Academy of Sciences. A second investigation—-perhaps his most famous—was on the glycogenic function of the liver; in the course of this he was led to the conclusion, which throws light on the causation of diabetes, that the liver, in addition to secreting bile, is the seat of an “ internal secretion,” by which it prepares sugar at the expense of the elements of the blood passing through it. A third research resulted in the discovery of the vaso-motor system. While engaged, about 1851, in examining the effects produced in the temperature of various parts of the body by section of the nerve or nerves belonging to them, he noticed that division of the cervical sympathetic gave rise to more active circulation and more forcible pulsation of the arteries in certain parts of the head, and a few months afterwards he observed that electrical excitation of the upper portion of the divided nerve had the contrary effect. In this way he established the existence of vaso-motor nerves—both vaso-dilatator and vaso-constrictor. The study of the physiological action of poisons was also a favourite one

231

with him, his attention being devoted in particular to curare and carbon monoxide gas. The earliest announcements of his results, the most striking of which were obtained in the ten years from about 1850 to 1860, were generally made in the recognized scientific publications; but the full exposition of his views, and even the statement of some of the original facts, can only be found in his published lectures. The various series of these Lemons fill seventeen octavo volumes. In addition he published an Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine in 1865, and a few years later a volume on General Physiology. An English Life of Bernard, by Sir Michael Foster, was published in London in 1899. K_) Bern burg, a town of Germany, duchy of Anhalt, on the Saale, 29 miles N. by W. from Halle by rail. A bronze statue of Bismarck was unveiled in 1896. It is the seat of considerable industry, manufacturing machinery and boilers, sugar, pottery, and stoneware, briquettes, chemicals, and lead and zinc smelting. Gardening is extensively carried on. Population (1885), 21,644 ; (1895), 32,374; (1900), 34,427. Bernhardt, Sarah [Rosine Bernard] (1845), French actress, was born in Paris, 22nd October 1845, of mixed French and Dutch parentage, and of Jewish descent; she was, however, baptized at the age of twelve and educated in a convent. Her earliest years were spent in Holland. When she was thirteen she entered the Paris Conservatoire, where she gained the second prize for tragedy in 1861 and the same for comedy in 1862. Her first appearance at the Comedie Frangaise was made in a minor part in Racine’s Iphigenie without any marked success, and her career there was speedily interrupted by her having the temerity to slap the face of one of the “leading ladies,” whom she considered to have insulted her sister. After a year spent in playing burlesque parts at the Porte St. Martin and Gymnase theatres, she took a sudden trip to Spain; but having spent all her money, she returned, and became a member of the company at the Odeon in 1867. There she made her first definite success as the Queen in Buy Bias. During the siege of Paris she organized an ambulance service in the theatre. When peace was restored she left the Odeon for the Comedie Frangaise, thereby incurring a considerable monetary forfeit. Her debut at the Comedie Frangaise was made in November 1872 as Gabrielle in Mademoiselle de Belle Isle. From that time she steadily increased her reputation, in spite of an uphill fight against adverse criticism, two of the most definite steps in her progress being her performances as Phedre (in December 1874), and Dona Sol in Hernani (in November 1877). In 1879 she came to London with the company of the Comedie Frangaise for their famous season at the Gaiety Theatre. By this time her position was securely established. Her amazing power of emotional acting, the extraordinary realism and pathos of her death scenes, the magnetism of her personality, and the beauty of her “ voix d’or,”—which could now rage like a tiger, now coo like a dove,—made the public tolerant of her occasional caprices. She had developed some skill as a sculptor, and exhibited at the Salon at various times between 1876 and 1881, gaining honourable mention in 1876. She also exhibited a painting there in 1880. In 1878 she published a prose sketch, Dans les Nuages. Her relations with the other societaires of the Comedie Frangaise having become somewhat strained, a crisis arrived in 1880, when, enraged by an unfavourable criticism of her acting, she threw up her position on the day following the first performance of Augier’s L’Aventuriere. This obliged her to pay a forfeit of