Science and Medicine in France: The Emergence of Experimental Physiology, 1790–1855
John E. LeschLesch begins with a look at the nature of physiology and its investigative methods in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the pressure and opportunities of the 1790s emerged the Paris clinical school, with its unification of surgery and internal medicine, its centering of education and practice in the hospitals, and its cultivation of pathological anatomy. He shows that in this environment a new generation of experimental physiologists appeared. Their use of animal experiment was marked by the surgical qualities of their training, and facilitated by the clinical experience of the hospitals, research provided by veterinarians, and chemical substances provided by pharmacists. Contemporary French ascendancy in science and advances in education provided the physiologists with scientific exemplars, authoritative standards, and substantive knowledge and technique. By the 1820s a significant segment of the French medical community was involved in some way with the new physiology.
Lesch’s exploration of these pathbreaking scientists and institutions creates a model for understanding the beginnings of a dominant research tradition.