François Magendie | Biography

François Magendie was born on October 6, 1783, the son of a surgeon who was known for his radical views and his active support of the French Revolution. The elder Magendie raised his two sons to be fiercely independent and to think for themselves--two traits that François never lost.

Apprenticed at sixteen to a surgeon friend of his father's, the young man began his formal medical studies a few years later, obtaining his medical degree in 1808 from the University of Paris. Although he was interested at first in anatomy, Magendie later switched to physiology and almost at once ran into trouble. At the time, most European scientists believed strongly in vitalism--the idea that biological processes were governed by "vital forces" that could not be explained in strictly scientific terms. Magendie disagreed. He was convinced that in the biologic sciences, just as in the physical sciences, facts were more important than theories--and even here, all facts had to be verified in the laboratory.

Magendie's strong opinions--and his desire to experiment in sometimes forbidden areas--won him numerous enemies and even, at times, the reputation of being a vivisectionist. Nevertheless, he established the idea of experimental physiology (an idea further popularized by his disciple, Claude Bernard) and made a number of important discoveries. Magendie, for instance, was interested in the action of various plant-derived drugs on the body. One of the drugs he studied was strychnine and, in 1809, he described in detail the effects of strychnine injections on animal subjects--and also proved that the poison reached the animal's spinal cord by the bloodstream and not, as was then commonly believed, by the lymphatic system. Because of such experiments, Magendie was able to introduce into French medicine a variety of new drugs, including morphine, codeine, quinine and, of course, strychnine.

In 1815, post-revolutionary France was short of food, and Magendie was asked to serve as chairman of a special commission set up to investigate the nutritional value of various food extracts. Intrigued by the problem, Magendie continued his nutritional investigations long after the commission disbanded. Among other things, he found that mammals could not be kept alive by diets that lacked any nitrogen-containing foods (in other words, proteins). He found, as well, that not all these substances were equally life-sustaining--a few, like gelatin, had very little nutritional value. Magendie's findings pointed the way for later nutritional researchers, like Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Thomas B. Osborne, and William Rose, who were able to provide more definitive answers.

Magendie devoted much of his time to studies on the nervous system and, in 1822, published a classic paper in which he distinguished the separate motor and sensory roots of the spinal nerves. He showed that the ventral roots, those entering the spine in front of the dorsal roots, carry impulses to the muscles; and the dorsal roots, those entering the spine slightly behind the ventral roots, carry impulses to the brain from receptor neurons.

Magendie also was the first person to describe cerebrospinal fluid and a foramen (natural hole) in the brain, now called the foramen of Magendie. He died on October 7, 1855.