CLAUDE BERNARD ON ANIMAL HEAT—AN UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AND SOME ORIGINAL NOTES HEBBEL E. HOFF, ROGER GUILLEMIN, and EDOUARD SAKIZ* I. Introduction Some time in the third week of November, 1872, Claude Bernard wrote to his confidante Mme. Raffalovich that "last Monday, I was attacked at the Académie des Sciences by one ofmy colleagues. I was not alarmed by it, but annoyed, because it was so much time wasted" [1]. Ifit was an attack at all, it was by no means directed against Bernard personally , but it did challenge opinions and press for reassessment in a sphere that bore the decisive imprint ofBernard's own work, whichhe had every right to believe was no longer a point ofissue. Controversy was not new to Bernard, nor was it at all unusual in the Académie, to which he had been elected at the early age offorty-one and had served as President in 1869. But it must have been irksome to Bernard to have to givefull andformalreply to objectionswhich, aswillbe seen, so completely lacked objective scientific foundation. His antagonist, Jean Baptiste Bouillaud, was a close colleague in the Académie—a member, like him, ofthe Section on Medicine and Surgery —and the Professor ofClinical Medicine at the Faculty ofMedicine. Born in the Charentes in 1796, and completing his medical education by 1823, Bouillaud had gained an early reputation by editing in 1824 a new edition ofthe Traité des Maladies du Cœur ofhis master Bertin, who gave full testimony to the brilliance ofhis pupil and ample credit for the new material that Bouillaud brought to the work [2]. This material was nothing less than the early evidence ofBouillaud's perception ofthe syndrome * Department ofPhysiology, Baylor University College ofMedicine, Houston, Texas. This work was supported in part by USPHS Grant GM-06518.03Al. Weare grateful to Professeur M. Bataillon, President, Collège de France, for permission to utilize this material from the Archives ofthe Collège de France. 347 ofendocarditis, and in particular of his recognition of the association between rheumatic fever and endocarditis. Within the next few years a series of volumes under Bouillaud's direct authorship established his primacy in this field to a degree that has never been seriously challenged and within a few years won him the Chair ofMedicine held previously by Laënnec and Corvisart [3-12]. He was one ofthe early physicians to take an interest in applying to medicine the statistical approach advocated by Laplace, and he was equally early in his interest in cerebral localization, pointing out the paramount symptom ofincoordination in animals after experimentaldecerebellation [13]. He remainedan adherent ofthedoctrines ofBroussais long after these had been generally abandoned, and in therapeutics he was a strong advocate ofrepeated venesections. By the 1840's his medical output was largely at an end. A friend of Thiers, he was elected to the National Assembly from his native Charente and voted consistently with the Left. After the revolution of1848 and the establishment ofthe short-lived Second Republic, he was named Dean of the Faculty ofMedicine but was removed from office within the year by a new Minister ofPublic Instruction. The reason was possibly the changing complexion of French politics, as the country moved toward the Coup d'État of1851 and the Empire ofNapoleon III. But it may also have been because ofa certain rigidity that made it impossible for him to regularize the accounts ofhis predecessor by quiet administrative expedients, which the Minister quite obviously desired [14]. Not until 1869 was he elected to the Académie des Sciences [15]. The record shows that he attended meetings with regularity, spoke frequently on matters relating to the heart and nervous system, particularly on speech and aphasia, served on many committees , and remained active in this way until his death in 1881, at the age ofeighty-five. By his own request, he was not accorded the traditional Éloge at his funeral [16]. II. Controversy over the Origin ofAnimal Heat How Bouillaud came to consider the matter ofanimal heat is uncertain. One contemporary note has it that he was, in fact, replying to an earlier— and as yet undiscovered—report on intracapillary combustion addressed to the Académie by Pigeon...