Thursday, June 27, 2024

Alexis Carrel was born on June 28, 1873, Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon, France and died: November 5, 1944 (age 71 years), Paris, France
Education: Claude Bernard University Lyon 1, University of Lyon
Award: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1912)
Partner: Anne Gourlez de La Motte
Parents: Alexis Carrel-Billiard, Anne Ricard Carrel
Alexis Carrel (French: [alɛksi kaʁɛl]; 28 June 1873 – 5 November 1944) was a French surgeon and biologist who spent most of his scientific career in the United States. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. Carrel was also a pioneer in tissue culture, transplantology and thoracic surgery.
Carrel was a young surgeon who was deeply affected by the 1894 assassination of the French president, Sadi Carnot, who died from a severed portal vein that surgeons believed was irreparable.[12] This tragedy inspired Carrel to develop new techniques for suturing blood vessels, such as the "triangulation" technique using three stay-sutures to minimize damage to the vascular wall during suturing. Carrel learned this technique from an embroideress, and later incorporated it into his work. According to Julius Comroe, Carrel performed every feat and developed every technique in vascular surgery using experimental animals between 1901 and 1910, leading to his great success in reconnecting arteries and veins and performing surgical grafts. These achievements earned him the Nobel Prize in 1912.

During World War I (1914–1918), Carrel and the English chemist Henry Drysdale Dakin developed the Carrel–Dakin method of treating wounds with an antiseptic solution based on chlorine, known as Dakin's solution. This method, which involved wound debridement and irrigation with a high volume of antiseptic fluid, was a significant medical advancement in the absence of antibiotics. For his contributions, Carrel was awarded the Légion d'honneur. The Carrel–Dakin method became widely used in hospitals. The mechanical irrigation technique developed by Carrel is still used today.

Tissue culture and cellular senescenceedit

Carrel developed methods to keep animal tissues alive in culture. He was interested in the phenomenon of senescence or aging. He believed that all cells continued to grow indefinitely, which became a widely accepted view in the early 20th century.[22] In 1912, Carrel began an experiment at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, where he cultured tissue from an embryonic chicken heart in a stoppered Pyrex flask of his own design. He supplied the culture with nutrients regularly and maintained it for over 20 years, longer than a chicken's normal lifespan. This experiment received significant popular and scientific attention, but it was never successfully replicated.

Sadly he is associated with eugenic policies in France

Accirding to Alexis Carrel, "The writings of Ruusbroec contain many truths as those of Claude Bernard."

John of Ruusbroec or Jan van Ruusbroec (pronounced [ˈjɑn vɑn ˈryzbruk]; 1293/1294 – 2 December 1381), sometimes modernized Ruysbroeck, was an Augustinian canon and one of the most important of the medieval mystics of the Low Countries. Some of his main literary works include The Kingdom of the Divine Lovers, The Twelve Beguines, The Spiritual Espousals, A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness, The Little Book of Enlightenment, and The Sparkling Stone. Some of his letters also survive, as well as several short sayings (recorded by some of his disciples, such as Jan van Leeuwen). He wrote in the Dutch vernacular, the language of the common people of the Low Countries, rather than in Latin, the language of the Catholic Church liturgy and official texts, in order to reach a wider audience

Claude Bernard (born July 12, 1813, Saint-Julien, France—died Feb. 10, 1878, Paris) was a French physiologist known chiefly for his discoveries concerning the role of the pancreas in digestion, the glycogenic function of the liver, and the regulation of the blood supply by the vasomotor nerves. On a broader stage, Bernard played a role in establishing the principles of experimentation in the life sciences, advancing beyond the vitalism and indeterminism of earlier physiologists to become one of the founders of experimental medicine. His most seminal contribution was his concept of the internal environment of the organism, which led to the present understanding of homeostasis—i.e., the self-regulation of vital processes.

Plato (/ˈpleɪtoʊ/ PLAY-toe;[1] Greek: Πλάτων), born Aristocles (Ἀριστοκλῆς; c. 427 – 348 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He raised problems for what became all the major areas of both theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Platonic Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the doctrines that would later become known as Platonism.

Born428/427 or 424/423 BC

Athens, Greece

Died348 BC (aged c. 75–80)

Athens, Greece

Notable work

• Euthyphro

• Apology

• Crito

• Phaedo

• Meno

• Protagoras

• Gorgias

• Symposium

• Phaedrus

• Parmenides

• Theaetetus

• Republic

• Timaeus

• Laws

Era Ancient Greek philosophy
School Platonic Academy
Notable students Aristotle
Main interests Epistemology, Metaphysics
Political philosophy
Notable ideas Allegory of the cave

Cardinal virtues
Form of the Good
Theory of forms
Divisions of the soul
Platonic love
Platonic solids
Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms (or ideas), which has been interpreted as advancing a solution to what is now known as the problem of universals. He was decisively influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself

Along with his teacher Socrates, and Aristotle, his student, Plato is a central figure in the history of philosophy.
Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years—unlike that of nearly all of his contemporaries.

Although their popularity has fluctuated, they have consistently been read and studied through the ages.
Through Neoplatonism, he also greatly influenced both Christian and Islamic philosophy.
In modern times, Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

The forms of human activity considered by Plato are more specific of our nature than hunger thirst sexual appetite and greed.

Since the Renaissance a privileged position has arbitrarily been given to certain aspects of man. Matter has been separated from mind. To matter has been attributed g greater reality than to mind.

Physiology and medicine have directed their attention to the chemical manifestation of the body's activities and to the organic disorders expressed by microscopic lesions of the tissues.

Sociology has envisaged man almost from the point of view of his ability to run machines of his output of work, of his capacity as a consumer of his economic value.

Pedagogy has directed its efforts toward the intellectual and muscular development of the children.
But these sciences have neglected the study if the various aspects of consciousness.

They should have examined man in the converging light of physiology and psychology.

They should have utilized data supplied by introspection and by study of behavior.

Bibliography
https://www.britannica.com/science/vasomotor-system
Wikipedia
Man the Unknown by Alexis Carrel

Saturday, June 1, 2024

What We Learn from Alexis Carrel

Man the Unknown by Alex Carrel

1935

The enormous advange gained by the science of Inanimate matter over those of living things is one of the greatest catastrophes ever suffered by humanity.

This environment born of our intelligence and our inventions is adjusted neither to our nature nor to our shape. We are unhappy. We degenerate morally and mentally.

The groups and the nations in which the industrial civilization attained its highest development are precisely those which are becoming weaker. And whose return to barbarism is the most rapid. But they do not realize it. They are withoit protection against the histile surroundings that science has built around them. We are victims of the backwardness of sciences of life over matter.

Since the natural conditions of existence have been destroyed by modern civilization the science of man has become the most necessary of all sciences.

The education dispensed by schools and universities consist chiefly in training the memory and of the muscles and in a certain manner the worship of the athletics. Are such disciplines really suitable for the modern men who need above all other things mental equilibrium, nervous stability, sound judgment, audacity, moral courage and endurance?

Why do hygienists behave as though human beings were exclusively liable to infections diseases while theybare also exposed to the attack of nervous and mental disorders and to weakening of the mind?

Our life is influenced in large measure by commercial advertising. Such publicity is undertaken only in the interest of the advertisers and not of the consumers.

For example the public has been made to believe that white bread is better than brown. Then flower has been bolted more and more and deprived of its most useful components. Such tratament permit its preservation for longer periods of time and facilitate making the bread. The consumata inferior product believing it to be a superior one. And in countries where bread is the principal food populatiin degenerates.

As a result large quantities of alimentary and pharmaceutical products at the least useless and often harmful have become a necessity for civilized men.

In this manner greetings of individuals, sufficiently shrewd to create a popular demand for goods that they have fornsaleplays a leading part in the modern world.

In the organuzation of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the psychological and mental state of the workers has been completely neglected. Modern industry is based in the conception of the maximum production at lower costs in order that an individual or a group of individuals may earn as much as possible.

Each individual does a great many more things that in the past. Every day he comes in contact with more peoples, and quiet moments are exceptional in his existence. Intimacy no longer exist. The life of the small group has been subsituted with that of the heard.solitude is looked upon as a punishment or as a rare luxury.