About Corneille Heymans
Corneille Jean François Heymans was a Belgian physiologist. He studied at the Jesuit College of Saint Barbara and then at Ghent University, where he obtained a doctor's degree in 1920. Heymans won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1938 for showing how blood pressure and the oxygen content of the blood are measured by the body and transmitted to the brain. Heymans accomplished this by vivisection of two dogs, the head of one connected to its body only by nerves, and the second one's body was used to cross-perfuse (supply blood) to the first dog's head. Heymans was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1938 for showing how blood pressure and the oxygen content of the blood are measured in the body and transmitted to the brain via the nerves and not by the blood itself. Heymans found that the first dog's upward and downward cardiovascular reflex arc traffic were carried by its own vagus nerves, but agents introduced to the second dog's blood, which served the first dog's brain, had no effect.
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