Albert Dastre

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Albert Dastre (November 7, 1844 - October 22, 1917) was a French physiologist. He studied and worked under Claude Bernard (1813-1878) and Paul Bert (1830-1886) in Paris, and in 1886 attained the chair of General Physiology at the Sorbonne. In 1904 Dastre became a member of the Académie des sciences. One of his better-known assistants was Romanian physiologist Nicolae Paulescu (1869-1931), who was the discoverer of insulin.

Albert Dastre specialized in the field of physiological chemistry, and is remembered for his studies of glycosuria and diabetes, as well as his discovery involving the proteolytic properties of blood. In 1893, he noticed a reduction of fibrin during a phlebotomy in dogs, which he attributed to a destruction of fibrin. He called this phenomena, fibrinolysis to describe the dissolution of fibrin and the break up of blood clots. Dastre also observed fibrin dissolve when mixed with an antiseptic salt solution, and postulated that it was a form of digestion.

Among his written works was a philosophic and scientific treatise on life and death titled La Vie et la Mort, and in 1878-79 he published and edited Leçons sur les Phénomènes de la vie communs aux animaux et aux végétaux, a work composed by his former mentor, Claude Bernard. With his colleague Jean-Pierre Morat (1846–1920), the "Dastre-Morat Law" is derived, which states that "constriction of the body's surface blood vessels is usually accompanied by dilation of vessels of the viscera, and vice-versa".