Claude Bernard, born in the Rhône in 1813, was making up remedies in Lyon when he wrote a vaudeville, which got him dismissed. Once in Paris, he became Magendie's pupil at the Collège de France and turned physiology into an experimental science. The role of the liver in making glucose, the action of curare, the isolation of glycogen: all of it is his. He died in 1878.
The story
Claude Bernard was born at Saint-Julien, in the Rhône, in July 1813. An apprentice pharmacist at Lyon in 1832, he wrote a vaudeville, “La Rose du Rhône”, and was dismissed for it. A bachelor of letters in 1834, he came up to Paris, his parents having paid eighteen hundred francs to keep him out of the army.
He shared rooms in the Latin Quarter with Charles Lasègue, a psychiatrist to be, and Casimir Davaine, a microbiologist to be, and at the Collège de France became the pupil of François Magendie. His thesis of 1843 dealt with gastric juice and glucose.
The discoveries came one after another: the part played by the pancreatic secretion in digesting fats and by the liver in producing glucose, in 1848; the specific action of curare on the neuromuscular junction, in 1856; the isolation of glycogen, in 1857. His wife, Fanny Martin, campaigned in the animal protection society against the vivisection he practised.
From 1850 he framed the idea of the ‘milieu intérieur’, the internal environment — that a body holds the conditions around its own cells steady — from which homeostasis would come. His “Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale”, published in 1865, reaches beyond biology: Zola used it to write “Le Roman expérimental”.
Elected to the Académie des sciences in 1854, to the Académie française in 1868, a senator in 1869, he died in Paris on 10 February 1878. The Republic gave him a state funeral: the first French scientist to receive one. He lies in Division 20.
The grave
The stone is plain and the inscription interminable: “Claude Bernard, member of the Institut, Académie des sciences and Académie française, professor at the Collège de France and at the Muséum d'histoire naturelle, honorary professor at the Faculté des sciences, member of the Académie de médecine, president of the Société de biologie, former senator, commander of the Légion d'honneur, born at Saint-Julien (Rhône) on 11 July 1813, died in Paris on 10 February 1878.” Eleven titles, not one discovery. The phrase “milieu intérieur” — the internal environment, from which all modern physiology sprang — does not appear on the grave of the man who coined it.
On site, do not miss
The inscription and its eleven titles: not a single discovery is named — not glycogen, not curare, not the internal environment.
Visitors' questions
Where is Claude Bernard's grave?
In Division 20, Chemin du Bassin, eighth row, in the central part of the cemetery. The inscription is one of the longest in Père-Lachaise: it lists eleven titles, from the Académie française to the Collège de France.
François AragoWhat did Claude Bernard discover?
The liver's role in producing glucose and the pancreas's role in digesting fats in 1848, the action of curare on the neuromuscular junction in 1856, glycogen in 1857 — and above all the concept of the milieu intérieur, the internal environment, forerunner of homeostasis.
Jean-Louis BaudelocqueWhy a state funeral?
Because he was the first French scientist ever to receive one, in February 1878: the fledgling Third Republic meant to honour science as it honoured its statesmen. His work had reached beyond medicine into literature.
Georges CuvierWhat is his link with Zola?
His “Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale” — Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine — published in 1865, gave Zola the method he claimed in “Le Roman expérimental”, The Experimental Novel: observe, form a hypothesis, test it against the facts — transposed to the novel.
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