The Legacy of Mirko Grmek's Historical Studies of Claude Bernard

Essay Review

FREDERIC L HOLMES*

Mirko D Gnmek, Le legs de Claude notebooks enable the historian to reconstruct Bernard, Penser la medecine, Paris, Fayard, Bernard's experimental pathway at the level of 1997, pp. 439, FF 160.00 (2-213-60014-7). the daily interaction between thought and action. Seldom has a scientist of such stature The French noun Legs can be translated left so full a record of the evolution of his either as "legacy" or as "bequest". The title of investigative pathway and of his private the present volume implies both meanings. The intellectual pathway as has Claude Bernard. No book is, in one sense, an interpretation of the other historian has acquired so extensive a legacy left to posterity by the experimental knowledge of the work and thought of Bernard discoveries and the thoughts of the famous as has Mirko Grmek during his long nineteenth-century French physiologist, Claude preoccupation with his eminent subject. Bernard. But the word refers also to the Le legs de Claude Bernard is a collection of bequest that Bernard left to future scholarship essays, each of which describes a particular in the form of the massive collection of episode in the life of, an aspect of the thought unpublished documents that have been of, or one of the experimental achievements of preserved. It is the special contribution of Bernard. After a chapter that summarizes Mirko Grmek to Bernard scholarship to have briefly the life and work of the distinguished catalogued this collection, and to have revealed French physiologist, Grmek discusses the the importance of these documents for a full "philosophical credo" that Bernard expressed understanding of the evolution of Bernard's in the inaugural address he delivered upon his work and his ideas. As Grmek stresses in his election to the Academie Francaise in 1869. preface, Bernard continually returned to the Grmek draws on the first notes for and same problems and continually developed his multiple drafts of the lecture to show how ideas about them. Historians who treat Bernard's ideas evolved from initial sketch to Bernard's views as "fixed opinions, established finished performance. once and for all" (p. 11), misunderstand the 'The necessity of liberty in the phenomena nature of Bernard's thought. Although much of of life' follows Bernard's long struggle to the evolution of his ideas can be traced in reconcile the doctrine of determinism on which Bernard's prodigious output of published he believed the experimental investigation of lectures and scientific papers, the unpublished vital phenomena rested, with the fact that papers add many subtle nuances, often coming living beings also exhibit spontaneity, and that closer to the earliest traces of his original ideas human beings are "fated to be free". 'The birth than do the published versions. The laboratory of a key concept: the milieu interieur' traces Bernard's most important general physiological idea through its long evolution from a "first *Professor Frederic L Holmes, Section of the History of Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, cluster of ideas" jotted down in a notebook, New Haven, Connecticut, USA through the many stages of development

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Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.234, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:47:11, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300064760 Essay Review represented in his pedagogical lectures, to its undertaken here to challenge such an final, most powerful statement in his overstatement is explainable because of the posthumously published Phenomena oflife nature of this volume. Most of the chapters common to plants and animals. 'Notions of were published originally during the 1960s, disease and health' analyses Bernard's view when he had just completed cataloguing that pathological states and physiological states Bernard's massive archival bequest, and when are not "two essentially different modes" his primary goal was to show how revealing (p. 184), but that the former are only these unpublished documents were about the disturbances of the latter. genesis and further development of Bernard's The next three chapters follow the own views. He has revised the original papers, chronology of three phases in Bernard's most mainly to take into consideration later writings important experimental pathway, that which on these subjects by other scholars, but the led to the discovery of the glycogenic function original structure and orientation remain of the liver, the artificial production of diabetic mostly intact. The majority of these essays condition by a puncture of the floor of the represent, therefore, an earlier stage in Grmek's fourth ventricle of the brain, and finally to the views about Bernard than does the book isolation of glycogen. One chapter is devoted Raisonnement expe'rimental et recherches to Bernard's last sustained experimental toxicologiques chez Claude Bernard, which he venture, the study of anaesthesia in plants, and published in 1973. In that magisterial treatment its relation to his concept of a general of one major strand in Bernard's network of physiology. The last three chapters treat of the research enterprises, Grmek presented relations between Bernard and Louis Pasteur, Bernard's contributions woven together with Bernard's assessment of his two prominent the contributions of contemporary investigators German contemporaries, Carl Ludwig and to form a collective investigative field. Here Rudolph Virchow, and the nutritional the focus is on the Bernard who, even when experiments that Bernard performed on attentive to the work of his contemporaries, himself. always sets himself apart from them. Each of these chapters uses manuscript Even though they were first composed sources effectively to illuminate the evolution three decades ago, this collection of Grmek's of Bernard's thought and activity. Collectively essays on Bernard is still very welcome today. they provide a rich portrait of one of the most Published in scattered form in various journals complex figures in the history of science. It is and other formats, the originals are hard to the best single source available for viewing find. Their reappearance here in one accessible Claude Bernard as he painstakingly worked out place will make clear to younger historians of in private what he eloquently professed in the life sciences how much Mirko Grmek has public. contributed to a deeper understanding of There is in this book, however, no overall Claude Bernard. At the same time they leave reassessment of the role of Claude Bernard in open many questions for future scholarship on the formation of experimental physiology. In Bernard and on nineteenth-century physiology. his introduction Grmek cites with tacit In a review of 'The historiography of the approval the statement by Bernard's Claude Bernard industry', Ludmilla Jordanova contemporary, Jean-Baptiste Dumas, that claimed in 1978 that Bernard was one of those Bernard was "not only a great physiologist, he "few major scientific figures whose work was physiology itself' (p. 9). That claim, generates books, articles and reprints at an consonant with Bernard's own estimation of alarming rate". (Hist. Sci. 1978, 16: 214.) his importance, cannot be maintained in light Whether or not the rate of scholarly publication of the more complex picture of nineteenth- on Bernard was excessive at that time, it has century physiology that is emerging from since then greatly diminished. Although recent scholarship. That Grmek has not several articles still appear each year dealing

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Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.234, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:47:11, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300064760 Essay Review with some aspect of Bernard's work, there digestive action of pancreatic fluid that I had have been far fewer comprehensive treatments followed only through his first major discovery of him or his place in the history of physiology about its function in 1848. (Ana Cecilia since 1978 than before then. Two exceptions Rodriguez de Romo, 'Tallow and the time are John Lesch's Science and medicine in capsule: Claude Bernard's discovery of the France: the emergence ofexperimental pancreatic digestion of fat', Hist. Philos. Life physiology, 1790-1855 (Cambridge, Harvard Sci., 1989, 11: 273-92.) There remains, University Press, 1984), which places however, a large corpus of still unexploited Bernard's early career in new perspective with laboratory notebooks. Perhaps additional relation to that of his mentor, Fran,ois studies of the fine structure of selected portions Magendie; and Pierre Gendron's interesting of Bernard's research trail would produce little Claude Bernard: Rationalite' d'une methode new insight about his general experimental (Paris, J Vrin, 1992), which is more a approach. To cover the whole of his philosophical analysis than an addition to the investigative activity at this level of detail historical literature. Some decline in interest in would require an enormous, unwieldy multi- Bernard may be due to a general reorientation volume work. It would be more rewarding to of history of science away from the "great attempt a reconstruction of the full range of men" that Jordanova contends had become Bernard's investigative enterprise at a level mythical figures; but Bernard has suffered intermediate between the existing accounts somewhat more in this regard than other based on his publications and the daily level "mythical" figures, such as Louis Pasteur or that the notebook records document. Such a Antoine Lavoisier, who have been subjects in narrative not only can tell us more about the recent years for major re-evaluations. I would origins of his major discoveries, but can suggest that one reason for Bernard's relative elucidate the interactions between the several eclipse is that, besides making a series of distinct investigative lines that he maintained illustrious discoveries in the prime of his through his career, and reveal whether, or how, career, Bernard was pre-eminently a deep his experimental style changed over the years. thinker; but neither discovery nor scientific Mirko Grmek was the first historian to thought has been at the centre of attention in reconstruct Bernard's scientific discoveries the recent historiography of science. One of the through the use of his laboratory notebooks. most refreshing qualities of Le legs de Claude Grmek introduced me to these documents Bernard is that Grmek treats the evolution of when I visited Paris as a fledgling Bernard Bernard's scientific thought as a subject of scholar during the 1960s, and he very vital importance, one that merits the effort to generously supported my interest in using the follow it through all its subtle stages of notebooks to examine Bernard's early development. investigations in the field of animal chemistry. Where are the most promising opportunities During the course of our respective studies of for further scholarship on Claude Bernard? the events leading to Bernard's claim in the Concerning his personal trajectory, there is still autumn of 1848 that the liver produces sugar in much room for reconstructing further segments an animal which was not previously receiving of his experimental pathway. Grmek has sugar in its diet, a difference of interpretation thoroughly treated Bernard's investigations of has arisen between us regarding an experiment curare, carbon monoxide poisoning, and other that both of us regard as crucial to Bernard's studies of the effects of toxic substances. I discovery. In his own retrospective account of contributed a detailed narrative of the first five, this discovery in his Introduction to the study formative years in his pursuit of a cluster of ofexperimental medicine, Bernard portrayed problems relating to animal chemistry. Ana himself as having accepted without question Cecilio Rodriguez de Romo has extended to the "reigning theory" that sugar in animals 1851 the history of his investigations of the derives exclusively from its aliments. While

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Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.234, on 24 Sep 2021 at 05:47:11, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300064760 Essay Review searching for the site in which this alimentary substances. Nevertheless, I agree with Grmek sugar is destroyed in the animal, he recalled, he that my interpretation is not decisive. Neither was led inadvertently, through a simple control is the other account. experiment, to recognize the presence of sugar This friendly debate is significant, not in the portal vein blood of an animal fed a because Mirko Grmek and I agree to disagree sugar-free meat diet. This result immediately on this one point (there is far more on which led him to see that the "theory of the origin of we are in full agreement), but because it raises animal sugar that had served as my point of a fundamental question about the limits in the departure was false". (The relevant passages extent to which laboratory notebook records are reproduced in Le legs de Claude Bernard, reveal the intimate mental processes of pp. 225-8.) Grmek identified an experiment in scientific investigation. Since the publication of Bernard's laboratory notebook, performed in my interpretation of this nodal event in the August 1848, as the one to which Bernard investigative career of Claude Bernard in 1974, referred, and concluded that it verified I have reconstructed similar events in the work Bernard's interpretation of the event. In his of other scientists who were, or are, still living. laboratory notebook, following the description, With them I was able to discuss pages from Bernard commented, "This experiment is their own experimental records that appeared to exceedingly strange. From it one can document such turning points. Even this special comprehend nothing. Would sugar form in the advantage left unresolved ambiguities in the portal vein, by what organ, by what reconstruction of the key events. Conflicts mechanism?" (my translation). In my account between memory and the documentary of the event (Frederic L Holmes, Claude evidence could not always be decided in favour Bernard and animal chemistry, Cambridge, of one or the other. These encounters with the Mass., Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. authors of such records have left me less 423-4), I ventured the view that it was not confident that any such reconstructions which merely the presence of sugar in the blood, but go beyond the recorded data itself can be its presence specifically in the blood of the completely decisive. That does not mean that portal vein, that Bernard could not at first we should desist from attempting to penetrate understand. I supported this view with several into the mind of the investigator at such crucial arguments about the circumstances of the times. Laboratory notebooks provide us experiment that did not appear to fit Bernard's unparalleled opportunities to do so. But when later reconstruction of his experience. more than one historian reconstructs the same In the revised version of his article on the historical event, we should not be surprised, or discovery of the glycogenic function of the dismayed, that their interpretations will liver included in Le legs de Claude Bernard, sometimes differ. Grmek has replied to my interpretation. My The other major opportunity for further arguments, he writes, are "clever, but not scholarship concerning Claude Bernard lies in decisive". To two of my most immediate the broader arena of his relation to the arguments, he gives equally plausible physiology of his time and its later interpretations in favour of Bernard's own development. Like many creative giants, account. My case was not limited to these Bernard was absorbed so totally in his own direct arguments, but rested also on the more lifelong projects that he could not realistically general circumstance that Bernard had long evaluate his historical place. When he studied been sceptical of nutritional theories, such as the work or general views of important the alimentary origin of sugar, which rested contemporaries such as Carl Ludwig he did so, only on deductions from chemical properties as Grmek's account nicely shows (pp. 365-76), and that he had already entertained several to assess their relation to himself rather than to years earlier the thought that sugar might be appreciate their positions for their own sake. produced in the body from other alimentary He saw them only through the perspective of

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