Medicine through biographies. Bernard, Claude, 1813 – 1878, a French physician and pathophysiologist, was born in the village of Saint-Julien near Villefranche-sur-Saône

Bernard, Claude, 1813 – 1878, a French physician and pathophysiologist, was born in the village of Saint-Julien near Villefranche-sur-Saône. He received his early education in the Jesuit school of that town, and then proceeded to the college at Lyon, which, however, he soon left to become assistant in a drugstore. His leisure hours were devoted to the composition of a vaudeville comedy, and the success it achieved moved him to attempt a prose drama in five acts, «Arthur de Bretagne». At the age of twenty-one, in 1834, he went to Paris, armed with this play and an introduction to Saint-Marc Girardin, Professor of Literature at Sorbonne, but the critic dissuaded him from adopting literature as a profession, and urged him rather to take up the study of medicine. This advice Bernard followed, entering the School of Medicine at the University of Paris, and became an interne at the Hotel Dieu (with 26^th rank of academic standing among 29 students of his year!). At the hospital he was brought into contact with the great physiologist, François Magendie, who worked as a physician there, and whose official «preparateur» at the Collège de France Bernard became in 1841. Bernard’s first paper on the Сhorda tympani was published in 1843, the year he received his M.D. degree. Three years later he was appointed Magendie's associate professor at the college, and in 1855 succeeded him as full professor.

Claude Bernard coined the concept of «milieu interieur» – constant liquid environment for body cells. «The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for a free and independent life», - he wrote. He was the founder of the concept of neurism in medicine, he discovered vasomotor nerves and neurogenic microcirculatory disorders (1851), glycogen production in the liver and the ability of this organ to liberate glucose in blood after neural stimulus (1848), he formulated the hepatogenic theory of diabetes mellitus pathogenesis (1877), introduced the practice of blind experiments and wrote the first textbook on experimental pathophysiology (1865). French Emperor Louis-Napoleon personally financed his lab. When Bernard died he was accorded a public funeral – an honor which had never before been bestowed by France on a man of science.

He wrote: «I consider the hospital to be the antechamber of medicine, it is the first place where the physician makes his observations. But the laboratory is the temple of the science of medicine».

Reference: Bernard C. Recherches expérimentales sur les fonctions du nerf spinal ou accessoire de Willis. Paris, 1851.

Chizhevsky Alexander Leonidivich, 1897 – 1964, a Soviet biophysicist, pathophysiologist, poet, artist and philosopher. Chizhevsky was born in the small town of Zehanovec in the family of a Russian artillery officer. His father was talented inventor. Alexander graduated from Kaluga technical college, where one of his teachers was the founder of cosmonautics K.E. Tsiolkovsky, who had greatly influenced him. Chizhevsky entered Moscow Higher School of Commerce and later moved to Moscow Archeological Institute, but World War I ruined his plans. He joined the Russian Army as a volunteer, fought for 2 years, was wounded and awarded The Cross of St. George for courage; in 1918-1922 he completed his education at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and later – at the Faculty of Medicine, at Moscow University.

In 1924 Chizhevsky came to the conclusion that not only biological, but also social and historical phenomena on the Earth are controlled by cyclic electromagnetic and radiation activity of the Sun. He is the founder of Heliobiology and the term “cosmic weather” was suggested by him. He discovered and experimentally investigated the opposite influence of positively and negatively charged aeroions on cells and organisms and applied this phenomenon in physiotherapy and communal hygiene; he invented “Chizhevsky’s chandelier” for artificial aeroionization. Chizhevsky was the first to carry out research of the electromagnetic properties of erythrocytes in circulating blood; he is a pioneer in biophysics of microcirculation: he suggested an explanation for the mechanisms of rouleau and other pre-static phenomena (1932), which is broadly used in the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) test. He also discovered metachromasia in bacterial cells (1935). A.L. Chizhevsky was elected Honorary President of the 1^st World Congress in Biophysics and Cosmic Biology (1939), awarded the Stalin prize and nominated by scientists of different countries for the Nobel prize. In 1942 the scientist was falsely accused of anti-Soviet conspiracy, imprisoned for 8 years, and later exiled. In 1954 he was released, but continued his research in Kazakhstan, far from the main academic centers. He devoted this period to studies in flow structure of moving blood. In 1958 Chizhevsky returned to Moscow where he published several books on aeroionification of buildings and on biophysics. He was also a gifted poet, a philosopher in the spirit of Russian Cosmism and an original painter. Science historians called this polymath: “Soviet Leonardo”.

References: A.L. Chizhevsky, Structural Analysis of the Mooving Blood. Moscow: USSR Acad. of Sci. Publ., 1959. 266 Pp. (Russian).