The exhibition À bras le corps! Savants et instruments au Collège de France au XIXe siècle presents a selection of some fifty historical scientific instruments held at the Collège de France, complemented by loans from several institutions and collectors. The exhibition presents an original account of the history of experimental science from the French Revolution to 1920, at the intersection of physics, physiology and psychology, which finds contemporary resonance not only in scientific research, but also in representations and practices of the body.
Several major figures are featured in spaces that recreate the atmosphere of a laboratory: Arsène d'Arsonval, Claude Bernard, Charles-Émile François-Franck, René Marage, Étienne-Jules Marey and Abbé Rousselot.
Around the scientists, a multitude of other players appeared, including audiences, assistants, instrument manufacturers, industrialists, academics and politicians, not forgetting civil society, whose therapeutic hopes and militant commitments were far from insensitive to the science being developed in the laboratories of the Collège de France. A gallery of instruments reveals more about the manufacturers, indispensable allies of Collège de France scientists engaged in experimentation. Over the course of the 19th century, these "artist-builders" became engineers trained at prestigious schools, and were at the origin of several major 20th-century industrial companies. Through texts and objects, as well as a wide range of interactive features, the À bras-le-corps!exhibition presents a rich and varied picture of science in the making, an image that is as valid for the long 19th century as it is for our own time.
