Milieu interieur
Encyclopedia
Milieu intérieur or interior milieu, from the French, milieu intérieur, (the environment within) is a term coined by Claude Bernard
to refer to the extra-cellular fluid environment
, and its physiological capacity to ensure protective stability for the tissues
and organs of multicellular living organisms.
used the term in several works from 1854 until his death in 1878. He probably adopted it from the histologist Charles Robin, who had employed the phrase “milieu de l’intérieur” as a synonym for the ancient hippocratic
idea of humors. Bernard was initially only concerned with the role of the blood but he later included that of the whole body in ensuring this internal stability. He summed up his idea as follows:
, Joseph Henderson, and particularly Walter Cannon and his idea of homeostasis
that it received its present recognition and status.
Milieu intérieur or interior milieu, from the French, milieu intérieur, (the environment within) is a term coined by Claude Bernard
to refer to the extra-cellular fluid environment
, and its physiological capacity to ensure protective stability for the tissues
and organs of multicellular living organisms.
used the term in several works from 1854 until his death in 1878. He probably adopted it from the histologist Charles Robin, who had employed the phrase “milieu de l’intérieur” as a synonym for the ancient hippocratic
idea of humors. Bernard was initially only concerned with the role of the blood but he later included that of the whole body in ensuring this internal stability.Gross, C. G. (1998) "Claude Bernard and the constancy of the internal environment" Neuroscientist 4: 380-385 http://nro.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/5/380 He summed up his idea as follows:
, Joseph Henderson, and particularly Walter Cannon and his idea of homeostasis
that it received its present recognition and status.
Milieu intérieur or interior milieu, from the French, milieu intérieur, (the environment within) is a term coined by Claude Bernard
to refer to the extra-cellular fluid environment
, and its physiological capacity to ensure protective stability for the tissues
and organs of multicellular living organisms.
used the term in several works from 1854 until his death in 1878. He probably adopted it from the histologist Charles Robin, who had employed the phrase “milieu de l’intérieur” as a synonym for the ancient hippocratic
idea of humors. Bernard was initially only concerned with the role of the blood but he later included that of the whole body in ensuring this internal stability.Gross, C. G. (1998) "Claude Bernard and the constancy of the internal environment" Neuroscientist 4: 380-385 http://nro.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/5/380 He summed up his idea as follows:
, Joseph Henderson, and particularly Walter Cannon and his idea of homeostasis
that it received its present recognition and status.Cross, S. T. Albury, W. R. (1987) "Walter B. Cannon, L. J. Henderson, and the Organic Analogy" Osiris 3:165-192 page 175 http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/368665 The current 15th edition notes it as being Bernard's most important idea.
with that of a mechanistic process in which the body's physiology was regulated through multiple mechanical equilibrium adjustment feedbacks. Walter Cannon's later notion of homeostasis (while also mechanistic) lacked this concern, and was even advocated in the context of such ancient notions as vis medicatrix naturae
.
Cannon, in contrast to Bernard, saw the self-regulation of the body as a requirement for the evolutionary emergence and exercise of intelligence, and further placed the idea in a political context: "What corresponds in a nation to the internal environment of the body? The closest analogue appears to be the whole intricate system of production and distribution of merchandise". He suggested as an analogy to the body's own ability to ensure internal stability, that society should preserve itself with a technocratic bureaucracy, "biocracy".
The idea of milieu intérieur, it has been noted, led Norbert Wiener
to the notion of cybernetics
and negative feedback
creating self-regulation in the nervous system
and in nonliving machines, and that "today, cybernetics, a formalization of Bernard’s constancy hypothesis, is viewed as one of the critical antecedents of contemporary cognitive science".
Claude Bernard
Claude Bernard was a French physiologist. He was the first to define the term milieu intérieur . Historian of science I. Bernard Cohen of Harvard University called Bernard "one of the greatest of all men of science"...
to refer to the extra-cellular fluid environment
Extracellular fluid
Extracellular fluid usually denotes all body fluid outside of cells. The remainder is called intracellular fluid.In some animals, including mammals, the extracellular fluid can be divided into two major subcompartments, interstitial fluid and blood plasma...
, and its physiological capacity to ensure protective stability for the tissues
Tissue (biology)
Tissue is a cellular organizational level intermediate between cells and a complete organism. A tissue is an ensemble of cells, not necessarily identical, but from the same origin, that together carry out a specific function. These are called tissues because of their identical functioning...
and organs of multicellular living organisms.
Origin
Claude BernardClaude Bernard
Claude Bernard was a French physiologist. He was the first to define the term milieu intérieur . Historian of science I. Bernard Cohen of Harvard University called Bernard "one of the greatest of all men of science"...
used the term in several works from 1854 until his death in 1878. He probably adopted it from the histologist Charles Robin, who had employed the phrase “milieu de l’intérieur” as a synonym for the ancient hippocratic
Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles , and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...
idea of humors. Bernard was initially only concerned with the role of the blood but he later included that of the whole body in ensuring this internal stability. He summed up his idea as follows:
The fixity of the milieu supposes a perfection of the organism such that the external variations are at each instant compensated for and equilibrated.... All of the vital mechanisms, however varied they may be, have always one goal, to maintain the uniformity of the conditions of life in the internal environment .... The stability of the internal environment is the condition for the free and independent life.
Early reception
Bernard’s idea was initially ignored in the nineteenth century. This happened in spite of Bernard being highly honored as the founder of modern physiology (he indeed received the first French state funeral for a scientist). Even the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica does not mention it. His ideas about milieu interieur only became central to the understanding of physiology in the early part of the twentieth century. It was only with Joseph BarcroftJoseph Barcroft
Sir Joseph Barcroft CBE, FRS was a British physiologist best known for his studies of the oxygenation of blood....
, Joseph Henderson, and particularly Walter Cannon and his idea of homeostasis
Homeostasis
Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...
that it received its present recognition and status.
Milieu intérieur or interior milieu, from the French, milieu intérieur, (the environment within) is a term coined by Claude Bernard
Claude Bernard
Claude Bernard was a French physiologist. He was the first to define the term milieu intérieur . Historian of science I. Bernard Cohen of Harvard University called Bernard "one of the greatest of all men of science"...
to refer to the extra-cellular fluid environment
Extracellular fluid
Extracellular fluid usually denotes all body fluid outside of cells. The remainder is called intracellular fluid.In some animals, including mammals, the extracellular fluid can be divided into two major subcompartments, interstitial fluid and blood plasma...
, and its physiological capacity to ensure protective stability for the tissues
Tissue (biology)
Tissue is a cellular organizational level intermediate between cells and a complete organism. A tissue is an ensemble of cells, not necessarily identical, but from the same origin, that together carry out a specific function. These are called tissues because of their identical functioning...
and organs of multicellular living organisms.
Origin
Claude BernardClaude Bernard
Claude Bernard was a French physiologist. He was the first to define the term milieu intérieur . Historian of science I. Bernard Cohen of Harvard University called Bernard "one of the greatest of all men of science"...
used the term in several works from 1854 until his death in 1878. He probably adopted it from the histologist Charles Robin, who had employed the phrase “milieu de l’intérieur” as a synonym for the ancient hippocratic
Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles , and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...
idea of humors. Bernard was initially only concerned with the role of the blood but he later included that of the whole body in ensuring this internal stability.Gross, C. G. (1998) "Claude Bernard and the constancy of the internal environment" Neuroscientist 4: 380-385 http://nro.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/5/380 He summed up his idea as follows:
The fixity of the milieu supposes a perfection of the organism such that the external variations are at each instant compensated for and equilibrated.... All of the vital mechanisms, however varied they may be, have always one goal, to maintain the uniformity of the conditions of life in the internal environment .... The stability of the internal environment is the condition for the free and independent life.
Early reception
Bernard’s idea was initially ignored in the nineteenth century. This happened in spite of Bernard being highly honored as the founder of modern physiology (he indeed received the first French state funeral for a scientist). Even the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica does not mention it. His ideas about milieu interieur only became central to the understanding of physiology in the early part of the twentieth century. It was only with Joseph BarcroftJoseph Barcroft
Sir Joseph Barcroft CBE, FRS was a British physiologist best known for his studies of the oxygenation of blood....
, Joseph Henderson, and particularly Walter Cannon and his idea of homeostasis
Homeostasis
Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...
that it received its present recognition and status.
Milieu intérieur or interior milieu, from the French, milieu intérieur, (the environment within) is a term coined by Claude Bernard
Claude Bernard
Claude Bernard was a French physiologist. He was the first to define the term milieu intérieur . Historian of science I. Bernard Cohen of Harvard University called Bernard "one of the greatest of all men of science"...
to refer to the extra-cellular fluid environment
Extracellular fluid
Extracellular fluid usually denotes all body fluid outside of cells. The remainder is called intracellular fluid.In some animals, including mammals, the extracellular fluid can be divided into two major subcompartments, interstitial fluid and blood plasma...
, and its physiological capacity to ensure protective stability for the tissues
Tissue (biology)
Tissue is a cellular organizational level intermediate between cells and a complete organism. A tissue is an ensemble of cells, not necessarily identical, but from the same origin, that together carry out a specific function. These are called tissues because of their identical functioning...
and organs of multicellular living organisms.
Origin
Claude BernardClaude Bernard
Claude Bernard was a French physiologist. He was the first to define the term milieu intérieur . Historian of science I. Bernard Cohen of Harvard University called Bernard "one of the greatest of all men of science"...
used the term in several works from 1854 until his death in 1878. He probably adopted it from the histologist Charles Robin, who had employed the phrase “milieu de l’intérieur” as a synonym for the ancient hippocratic
Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles , and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...
idea of humors. Bernard was initially only concerned with the role of the blood but he later included that of the whole body in ensuring this internal stability.Gross, C. G. (1998) "Claude Bernard and the constancy of the internal environment" Neuroscientist 4: 380-385 http://nro.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/5/380 He summed up his idea as follows:
The fixity of the milieu supposes a perfection of the organism such that the external variations are at each instant compensated for and equilibrated.... All of the vital mechanisms, however varied they may be, have always one goal, to maintain the uniformity of the conditions of life in the internal environment .... The stability of the internal environment is the condition for the free and independent life.
Early reception
Bernard’s idea was initially ignored in the nineteenth century. This happened in spite of Bernard being highly honored as the founder of modern physiology (he indeed received the first French state funeral for a scientist). Even the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica does not mention it. His ideas about milieu interieur only became central to the understanding of physiology in the early part of the twentieth century. It was only with Joseph BarcroftJoseph Barcroft
Sir Joseph Barcroft CBE, FRS was a British physiologist best known for his studies of the oxygenation of blood....
, Joseph Henderson, and particularly Walter Cannon and his idea of homeostasis
Homeostasis
Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...
that it received its present recognition and status.Cross, S. T. Albury, W. R. (1987) "Walter B. Cannon, L. J. Henderson, and the Organic Analogy" Osiris 3:165-192 page 175 http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/368665 The current 15th edition notes it as being Bernard's most important idea.
Conceptual development
Bernard created his concept to replace the ancient idea of life forcesVitalism
Vitalism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is#a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from biochemical reactions...
with that of a mechanistic process in which the body's physiology was regulated through multiple mechanical equilibrium adjustment feedbacks. Walter Cannon's later notion of homeostasis (while also mechanistic) lacked this concern, and was even advocated in the context of such ancient notions as vis medicatrix naturae
Vis medicatrix naturae
Vis medicatrix naturae is the Latin translation of the Greek, νονσων φνσεις ιητροι, a phrase attributed to Hippocrates but which he did not actually use...
.
Cannon, in contrast to Bernard, saw the self-regulation of the body as a requirement for the evolutionary emergence and exercise of intelligence, and further placed the idea in a political context: "What corresponds in a nation to the internal environment of the body? The closest analogue appears to be the whole intricate system of production and distribution of merchandise". He suggested as an analogy to the body's own ability to ensure internal stability, that society should preserve itself with a technocratic bureaucracy, "biocracy".
The idea of milieu intérieur, it has been noted, led Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
to the notion of cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
and negative feedback
Negative feedback
Negative feedback occurs when the output of a system acts to oppose changes to the input of the system, with the result that the changes are attenuated. If the overall feedback of the system is negative, then the system will tend to be stable.- Overview :...
creating self-regulation in the nervous system
Nervous system
The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral. The central nervous...
and in nonliving machines, and that "today, cybernetics, a formalization of Bernard’s constancy hypothesis, is viewed as one of the critical antecedents of contemporary cognitive science".