Claude Bernard (1813–78) was a French physiologist who developed the principle of homeostasis, the physiological self-regulation mechanism that “automatically” seeks to correct the stable internal bodily environment when disrupted. One of the founders of modern physiological research, Bernard’s ideas remain relevant in investigating the physiological bases of many environmental health problems.
Born near Villefranche, Beaujolais, Bernard studied medicine at the University of Paris and in 1841 became an assistant at the College de France to experimental physiologist François Magendie, with whom he worked until his own appointment in 1854 to the chair of general physiology. In 1855, Bernard followed Magendie as a professor of experimental physiology.
Bernard’s earliest researches were on the action of the secretions of the alimentary canal, the pancreatic juice, and the relationship between the liver and nervous system, for which he received three prizes from the Academy (1851–53.) However, his most significant contribution to physiological theory was the notion that life requires a constant internal environment (milieu interieur,) with cells working best within a narrow range of osmotic pressure and temperature.
Bernard’s later investigations were on the changes in temperature of the blood, the oxygen in arterial and venous blood, the opium alkaloids, curare, and the sympathetic nerves. His Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865) is a definitive account of the new biology.
The American academic and psychologist James Montrose Duncan Olmsted wrote the biography Claude Bernard: Physiologist (1938.)
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It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.
—Claude Bernard
Topics: Knowledge
Man cannot learn anything except by going from the known to the unknown.
—Claude Bernard
Topics: Discovery, Learn
Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.
—Claude Bernard
Topics: Science
The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.
—Claude Bernard
Topics: Experiment
A great discovery is a fact whose appearance in science gives rise to shining ideas, whose light dispels many obscurities and shows us new paths.
—Claude Bernard
A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes.
—Claude Bernard
Topics: Facts
A contemporary poet has characterized this sense of the personality of art and of the impersonality of science in these words—‘Art is myself; science is ourselves’.
—Claude Bernard
The doubter is a true man of science; he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science.
—Claude Bernard
Topics: Science
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