4to (278 x 220 mm), pp. 92 [1], with one wood-engraved illustration in the text; some slight foxing, but a very good copy, uncut in the original grey-green printed wrappers, spine weak, presentation inscription on upper wrapper (see below). £6500
The very rare first monograph publication (having appeared as a thesis earlier in the same year) of Bernard’s ‘remarkable exposition of the glycogenic function of the liver’ (Horblit). This treatise, ‘which Bernard used to obtain his doctorate in science, disproved two current theories of animal metabolism: first that animals cannot synthesize sugar; and second, that sugar in the blood only occurs in diabetic or otherwise unhealthy animals’ (Norman catalogue).
Bernard was not a great academic success; an ‘average student’ according to DSB. Although he graduated M.D. in 1843, further academic honours were slow to come to him, and indeed his application for membership of the Académie des Sciences in 1850 was unsuccessful. Membership of the Académie des Sciences, gained with this treatise, seems to have been the accolade he craved.
Provenance: inscribed ‘Monsieur Mignet de l’Académie Française de l’Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques &c &c homage de l’auteur/ Cl. Bernard’. The recipient was the distinguished historian François-Auguste Mignet (1796-1884).
Grolier Medicine 67A; Horblit 11a; Norman catalogue 200
GBP 6500.00
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