La science experimentale

Paris: Bailliere, 1878. Text figures. Original cloth-backed boards; other than minor spotting, a very good copy. First edition of a series of Bernard’s essays, published posthumously. These essays were “chiefly devoted to the restatement of his views on determinism, with, however, and increasing emphasis, as time passed, on the autonomy of physiology as the science of the phenomen of life” (Olmsted). Essays include Bernard’s discussions on advances in the physiological sciences, on the definition of life, on animal heat, on the sensitivity in the animal and plant kingdoms, on the physiology of the heart and on the functions of the brain. Also included are the funeral orations by Jean-Baptise Dumas and Paul Bert.