Claude Bernard, and his views on medical research

Claude Bernard is famed for his discoveries and for his writings, rather than for his merit as a teacher. In comparing him with Pasteur, Tzanck (1933) says "Bernard n'a créé ni école, ni caste, et craignant par avance les cadres trop rigides, it répétait sans cesse á ses élves: 'Démolissez -moi, mais créez "'. The French pupils of Bernard provided little more than technical. assistance to their master. The famous painting by Lhermitte demonstrates how the "disciples" are merely engaged in experimental details to which they have delegated themselves. How different from the establishments of the German physiologists - especially that of Ludwig, whom Franklin (19+9) calls "the greatest physiological teacher of all time ". In Ludwig's laboratory the experiments going on simultaneously were singular in their diversity. Bernard, himself, would doubtless have laid the responsibility for the failure of his French pupils at the door of the French treasury. Samson Wright (1939) is in agreement with this view and states that lack of money and space were the fundamental obstacles which prevented Bernard from giving his country world leadership in his subject in his own generation. During Bernard's lifetime - by 1860 (Osier, 1891) - Germany had become the centre of the medical world. However, a German pupil of Bernard became a scientist of first rank: though Kühne was also a pupil of Virchow and of Helmholtz, the major part of his work - that concerning the intermediate products of digestion - shows the influence of his French teacher. The position of Kühne is important in that, in addition to his own work, his pupil Chittenden founded the first definite laboratory of physiological physiological chemistry in the New World at the Sheffield School of Science of Yale University. The Yale laboratory became the centre for the spread of physiological chemistry in the United States (Castiglioni, 191+7).

Grantor dc:publisher

The University of Edinburgh

Year dc:date.issued

1952

Author dc:creator

• Forwell George D.

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1842/32205

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:era.ed.ac.uk:1842/32205