Claude Bernard and Animal Chemistry: The Emergence of a Scientist

Abstract

"Animal chemistry" refers to what we now call biochemistry. In this discipline the second quarter of the 19th century was particularly important, for the chemists were slowly applying their new experimental methods to the living body. Particularly challenging were the problems of nutrition— the way that ingested food became part of the living tissue. Professor Holmes concentrates on the years 1842 to 1848, crucial for the development of biochemistry and crucial in the career of Claude Bernard. The first third of the book takes up chiefly the conceptual background of the second quarter of the 19th century, the chemical and biological theories, the experimental bases on which they rested, and the men involved in the personal and national rivalries. The remainder deals more intimately with Claude Bernard. Bernard, who devoted himself entirely to physiology, received his medical degree in 1843, at the age of 30. His dissertation dealt with the

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