Bernard, Claude

Bernard, Claude (klōd bĕrnär`), 1813–78, French physiologist. He turned from literature to medicine, working in Paris under Magendie and teaching at the Collège de France and at the Sorbonne. One of the great scientific investigators, he is known as the founder of experimental medicine because of his work on digestive processes, especially the discovery of the glycogenic function of the liver and of the action of pancreatic juice, and on the vasomotor mechanism. He wrote An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865, tr. 1927).

Bibliography

See J. M. D. Olmsted and E. H. Olmsted, Claude Bernard and the Experimental Method in Medicine (1952); R. Virtanen, Claude Bernard and His Place in the History of Ideas (1960).

---

Bernard, Claude

(born July 12, 1813, Saint-Julien, France—died Feb. 10, 1878, Paris) French physiologist. He taught at several major French institutions and was named a senator in 1869. He discovered the role of the pancreas in digestion, the glycogenic function of the liver in carbohydrate metabolism, and blood-supply regulation by the vasomotor nerves. He helped establish the principles of experimentation in the life sciences, including the need for a hypothesis. His concept of the internal environment of the organism led to the present understanding of homeostasis. Bernard also studied the effects of such poisons as carbon monoxide and curare. He was awarded the grand prize in physiology three times by the Académie des Sciences.