named for a Chair at the Sorbonne (Fig. 5). However, he never enjoyed lecturing there, preferring to give lectures in the Collège de France, where, in 1855, he finally succeeded Magendie. In 1861 he became a member of the Medical Academy and, in 1868, was elected to become one of the “immortal” members of the Académie Française. His seat was number 29, just in front of Saint-Marc Girardin, who had declined his career as a writer. He prepared his speech in the Académie very carefully, as can be seen in the copy of his draft. He must have spent a lot of time training for his talk during his summer holidays in St. Julien since he was far from being a renowned orator.
In 1869 Claude was appointed Senator by Napoleon III. The Emperor had decided to transfer the Chair of Physiology to the Natural History Museum with a far larger laboratory. Now he was even closer to the chemist Prof. Michel Eugène Chevreul, director of this museum for many years. The two had been personal friends since 1850. Chevreul, who had “baptized” cholesterol (“cholesterine”) in 1815, died at the age of 102 in 1889. The names of both are engraved below the roof of the museum. In his Introduction into Experimental Medicine Claude Bernard mentions that his book does not add much to the thinking of his friend Chevreul.
Fig. 5. A page of the speech given by Claude Bernard at the Académie Française, with his numerous corrections [2].
Experimental Medicine
The book Introduction into Experimental Medicine (1865) was his intellectual masterpiece [6]. Claude Bernard explains the principles of biomedical research, and much of its text is still relevant today. His remarks regarding pharmacotherapy can still serve as an introduction to today’s textbooks on “evidence-based medicine.” He wrote: “There are physicians who are fanatical about the effects of the drugs they prescribe. They do not accept critical comments which are based upon experiments. They say you can only prescribe drugs which you believe in, and they think that prescribing a drug to a patient you doubt about shows a lack of medical ethics. I don’t accept this way of thinking, it means deceiving oneself and deceiving others.” It is not astonishing that Claude Bernard had thus created vehement enemies among his clinical colleagues – no physician enjoys being called a deceiver!
Fig. 6. Original instruments used by Claude Bernard in the laboratory of his summer residence (Claude Bernard Museum, St. Julien; photo Dr. V. Jörgens).
The “Milieu intérieur”
Claude Bernard was the first to describe the “milieu intérieur.” His publication Lessons of Phenomena of Life in Animals and Plants [7] was one of the most influential advancements in the history physiology, only comparable to breakthroughs such as that of the Noble Prize winner Otto Meyerhof’s Chemical Dynamics of Life Phenomena. Claude Bernard described for the first time the “milieu intérieur.” He wrote: “I think I was the first to express the idea that for animals there are in fact two environments, one milieu which is outside the body and an inner milieu, in which the components of living tissues are embedded. The real existence of the animal doesn’t take place in the external world but inside the liquid medium of circulating organic fluid. This fluid is the expression of all local nutrition and the source and mouth of elementary exchange” [7].
Fig. 7. Claude Bernard statue in the village of St. Julien en Beaujolais (photo Dr. V. Jörgens).
His Home in St. Julien Became a Museum
In 1861 Claude Bernard purchased, for 60,000 francs, the manor house on the hill of Chatenay above Saint Julien, which is located just beside the small house owned by his parents and where he was born. He used to spend August and September every year at this property. He personally supervised the grape harvesting from his own vineyards and the production of his own Beaujolais. He had a laboratory installed, some of the instruments of which can still be seen there, and, even during his holidays, he carried out experiments, sometimes with frogs collected by boys in the neighborhood (Fig. 6). His property and his birthplace became a museum which was recently renovated (www.agglo-villefranche.fr/musee-claude-bernard.html). Once in the lifetime of every diabetologist, it should be an obligation to visit the birthplace of Claude Bernard and the museum, and of course to bring home some “Claude Bernard Wine” from his vineyards – it could certainly inspire diabetes researchers. They should also not miss out on the opportunity to take a picture of the Claude Bernard statue on the square in front of the church in St. Julien (Fig. 7).
An Inspiring Relationship
The lectures of Claude Bernard at the Collège de France were attended by famous people, including the Emperor of Brazil in 1873. Some of them disturbed the scientist, as he once reported himself: “On my right side was a beautiful, dark haired young woman. She was sitting on an elevated seat in the auditorium and therefore I could see her beautiful foot. She was wearing very nicely decorated shoes. On the left foot, the side of the heart, she was wearing a precious anklet with very expensive jewelry embracing the ankle from above. I must confess that this view was breath-taking.” Completely confused, he mixed up “aorta” and “carotis” and forgot half of his lecture.
In 1869 a young Russian lady, Madame Marie Raffalovich, daughter of wealthy Jewish parents from Odessa, attended one of his lectures at the Collège de France. Some days later this young woman asked for a private meeting and was looking for personal information concerning gynecology. Mrs. Raffalovich was 37 years old when she met the 56-year-old Claude Bernard. At the age of 16 years she had married a rich Russian Banker and lived in Paris. She had a university education and had published about the cultural life and scientific events in Paris in St. Petersburg newspapers. She spoke eight languages fluently and helped Claude Bernard to translate German, Italian, English, and Russian publications. Together, they attended cultural events in Paris and she visited him repeatedly in St. Julien, when Claude Bernard was there for the grape harvesting. Claude Bernard wrote numerous letters from Paris and St. Julien to Madame Raffalovic – 488 of his letters have been preserved and some of them published. Her letters to him were burned as per her request, like Madame von Stein’s hundreds of letters she had addressed to Goethe.
Claude Bernard’s Book: Lessons on Diabetes
In 1877, 21 lectures on diabetes given by Claude Bernard at the Collège de France appeared in the book Leçons sur le diabète et la glycogènese animale [8]. Over 381 pages, he describes countless animal experiments and concludes with a chapter in which he critically examines the explanations of the pathogenesis of diabetes mellitus offered at the time by numerous authors. He warns in advance that the remaining ignorance must not simply be filled with assumptions in order to support the various theories of the
