Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/573

Rh physiology. Anatomy, at this time, was well advanced and scientifically presented but physiology consisted of a mass of uncorrelated and inexact data.

His father died during this period, having lost most of his fortune before his death, and left Claude to depend on his own resources. He lived frugally and payed his fees with money earned by giving lessons. He was retiring, thoughtful, awkward in manner and impressed neither his fellow students nor his professors as being brilliant or liable to a great career. Only in the dissecting room did he attract attention by his careful and beautiful dissections.

In 1839, after serving as "externe" at the hospitals, he was made "interne" and appointed to work under Magendie, who was one of the physicians at the Hotel Dieu and professor of medicine at the Collége de France. The professor was allotted a small, dark room at the college for conducting research and was allowed a "préparateur" to assist in research and in experiments conducted to illustrate the lectures. He soon noticed Bernard's skill in dissection and appointed him his "préparateur." With this appointment, Bernard's career as experimental physiologist began. A glance at the state of physiology at this time will show the great odds against which he was about to work.

The spirit of present-day research was only beginning to be allowed full play. Harvey, early in the seventeenth century, opened the way for the application of experimental methods to physiological inquiry by his observations leading to the discovery of the circulation of the blood; but the vitalistic theory had impeded, at every step, the attempts to study living organisms. Slowly, this theory was losing ground and physico-chemical explanations substituted.

The spirit of progress was most apparent in Germany. Liebig had recently opened at Giessen the first public laboratory for chemical research. Wohler had made urea from ammonium cyanate, thus destroying the old vitalistic argument that life was necessary to form organic from inorganic substances. Johannes Müller was the foremost physiologist. He was a vitalist, but only in a modified degree much more acceptable than Haller and his pupils. He believed in the necessity of recognizing a vital force, but maintained it was not independent of certain conditions. He did not depreciate the value of the experimental method in discovering physiological truths, as is shown by his own work and that of his pupils, among whom Ludwig, DuBois Raymond and Helmholtz, soon to be the foremost physiologists in Germany, were just beginning their careers.

In England, Hall, Reid, Sharpey and Bowman were advancing the science by experimental methods.

France had looked too much to her own scientists for the words of progress and was far behind her neighbors. Cuvier and Bichat were