Claude Bernard
Biologist · 1813-1878 · Biology, stage 3: Meet the biologists
Made physiology experimental and framed the constancy of the internal environment.
Overview
Bernard was a French physiologist who established that the liver produces glucose, that the pancreas is required for fat digestion, and that nerves control the diameter of blood vessels. His larger contribution was methodological: he argued that medicine becomes a science only when hypotheses are tested by deliberate intervention under controlled conditions, and that a negative result is as informative as a positive one. He also proposed that the fluid surrounding the cells of a complex animal is held at constant composition, and that this constancy is the condition of a free life; Walter Cannon later named the idea homeostasis. Read the Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, which is a short book about how to run and interpret an experiment and is still used to teach method.
Where to start reading
Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale 1865
A statement of experimental method in the life sciences, on hypothesis, controls, and the interpretation of negative results. The Gutenberg text linked here is the French original; English translations are widely available in print.
Part of
Sources
- Claude Bernard Wikipedia
- Milieu intérieur Wikipedia
- American Physiological Society American Physiological Society
