Of course, he did not mean that he was wrong in his facts. But, in this particular lecture, he is speaking of the want of more science in practice, looking forward to a time when treatment should be based on science, not on tradition. Medicine, he says, is neither science nor art. Not science--_Trouverait-on aujourd'hui un seul médecin raisonnable et instruit osant dire qu'il prévoit d'une manière certaine la marche et l'issue d'une maladie ou l'effet d'une remède?_ Not art, because art has always something to show for its trouble: a statue, a picture, a poem--_Le médecin artiste ne crée rien, et ne laisse aucune oeuvre d'art, à moins d'appliquer ce titre à la guérison du malade. Mais quand le malade meurt, est-ce également son oeuvre? Et quand il guérit, peut-il distinguer sa part de celle de la nature?_ To Claude Bernard, experiments on animals for the direct advancement of medicine seemed a new thing: new, at all events, in comparison with the methods of some men of his time. He was only saying what Sir John Burdon Sanderson said in 1875 to the Royal Commission:-- _It is my profound conviction that a future will come, it may be a somewhat distant future, in which the treatment of disease will be really guided by science. Just as completely as mechanical science has come to be the guide of the mechanical arts, do I believe, and I feel confident, that physiological science will eventually come to be the guide of medicine and surgery._ Anyhow, lecturing a quarter of a century ago on diabetes, his special subject, Claude Bernard spoke out his longing to compel men into the ways of science, to give them some immediate sign which they could not refuse to see:-- "At this present time, medicine is passing from one period to another. The old traditions are losing ground, and scientific medicine (_la médecine expérimentale_) has got hold of all our younger men: every day it gains ground, and will establish itself against all its critics, and in spite of the excesses of those who are over-zealous for its honour.... And when men ask us what are the results of scientific medicine, we are driven to answer that it is scarcely born, that it is still in the making. Those who care for nothing but an immediate practical application must remember Franklin's words, _What is the use of a new-born child, but to become a man?_ If you deliberately reject scientific medicine, you fail to see the natural development of man's mind in all the sciences. Without doubt, our hands are empty to-day, but our mouth may well be filled with legitimate promises for the future." He died in 1878. The following account of the discovery of glycogen is taken from his _Nouvelle Fonction du Foie_ (Paris, 1853):--