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34 pp. 24x19 cm (9½x7½") modern pale blue paper wrappers. Custom clamshell case. First Edition.

Bernard's medical thesis on the gastric juice and the process of digestion, which he defended on 7 December 1843. Although Bernard never practiced medicine, his thesis "was a work both useful to medicine and dedicated to pure science, since it furnished new facts on gastric digestion and the transformations of carbohydrates in the animal organism" (DSB). The thesis presented Bernard's findings that if sucrose is injected into the blood it is eliminated by the kidneys, whereas glucose is retained, and that the gastric juices break sucrose down into a form of sugar which can be assimilated. Garrison-Morton 992.3; Norman 197; Waller 950; Wellcome II, p. 151.