He was educated at the Jesuit school of Villefranche. It will be recalled that Theodore Schwann was also a student of the Jesuits. In these days, when Jesuit educational training is impugned, the facts are worth noting. It is claimed especially that the old-fashioned training by means of the classics is narrowing. The old method of a definitely prescribed course of study for every student is said to hamper development. Slavish devotion to old pedagogic methods, it is urged, cannot but shackle and destroy initiative. The subordinate place of the sciences in this scheme of education is said to hinder progress in the sciences later in life, to leave the powers of observation undeveloped until too late, and to distract the mind of the student too much from the practical side of life. Here are two men whose lives are {274} an open contradiction to all the allegations of the opponents of the old Jesuit system of training. Needless to say that they are but two of many. Bernard pursued the course with the Jesuits at the Collège de Villefranche as far as it went. After this we find him at Lyons, at first pursuing studies in philosophy in preparation for his baccalaureate degree, evidently with the idea of eventually entering the university. Family reasons, mainly financial, compelled him to give up his studies, and for nearly two years he was an assistant in a pharmacy in Lyons. Here he developed a skepticism with regard to the effect of the drugs he compounded that led later in life to his important studies on the physiological action of remedies. The science of therapeutics was at that time in a most inchoate stage. Very little was known of the exact action of drugs. Exaggerated claims were made for many, but mainly on uncertain clinical experience. The modern, patent medicine was as yet unknown, but something not unlike it had become popular among the patrons of the Lyons pharmacy. One remedy was in constant demand by city patrons and by country people, who came from long distances especially to procure it. It was known as _la thériaque_--"the cure"--I suppose from some fancied connection with the root of the word therapeutics.