Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/580

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

sisted despite the obstacles in his way. In 1847, he was appointed a deputy at the Collège de France and a career seemed assured. He now could work in an official laboratory. He said at the beginning of his lectures:

Scientific medicine, gentlemen, which it ought to be my duty to teach here, does not exist.

Four years later, he was much disappointed in his career and thought of giving up scientific work and going into private practise. Unhappy domestic relations made matters worse, for his wife had no sympathy for his scientific endeavors. He was, however, beginning to be recognized as a coming man in science and was given the newly created chair of general physiology in the University of Paris at the Sorbonne. This was the first honorable position for him to occupy and his devotion to science was now assured. In the same year, he was elected to the Academy of Medicine and Surgery. In 1855, Magendie died and Bernard took his place as professor at the Collège de France.

The lectures were not specified at the college, so he usually chose some topic on which he was working and developed it, from lecture to lecture, illustrating with old and new experiments. He used his lectures to make known new facts and new or corrected and extended views. The reports which were made to the Académie des Sciences and the Société de Biologie were very brief and incomplete. Only in his published "Leçons" is a full account given of his experiments and results, many of which are found there alone. They were reported by one or another of Bernard's students, revised by him and published. These are his greatest written contributions. The series began with "Leçons de Physiologie expérimentale," published in 1855, dealing with the physiology of sugar and the glycogenic function of the liver. He published seventeen volumes in all.

In the winter of 1862-63, he was bothered with an abdominal trouble, probably appendicitis, from which he did not recover for five or six years. Part of the time he spent at his old home at St. Julien tending his gardens and living out of doors. Here he had an opportunity to broaden and generalize his ideas and write an "Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine." In his later years, his thinking became more general. He always tried to show the true spirit of physiological inquiry and to realize the general aspects of the whole field. This is well shown in his lectures on the phenomena of life common to plants and animals.

In 1864, he visited court and greatly interested Emperor Louis Napoleon, who entered into a lively discussion with him which lasted for two hours, and was so well pleased that he ordered his minister of public instruction to see that he had whatever he wanted. Bernard obtained