ABSTRACT
From the swirling maelstrom of postrevolutionary ideas and aspirations, the bourgeois class emerged to dominate the social and political structure of France. If there was a unifying theme in the chaotic and conflicting social and intellectual developments in postrevolutionary France, it was resistance to regimentation and distrust of restraints imposed by traditional authority. During the last third of the nineteenth-century French biological science began to receive urgently needed financial support from the government through the political activities of four outstanding scientists, all of whom more or less directly influenced Charles Richet. A practical concern for Richet, as it had been for F. Magendie and C. Bernard, was the lack of communication in the Faculte de Medecine between clinical medicine and the basic medical sciences. The role awaiting Richet was to move a step further toward the goal of Magendie and Bernard: to meld physiology with clinical medicine.
