From a Jansenist, he entered the École Polytechnique (which will not be qualified) with the intention of becoming an engineer. He then studied law, earning a doctorate in law in 1857, and finally under the influence of the zoologist, Gratiolet Pierre Louis (1815-1865), he became interested in physiology, becoming one of the brightest students of Claude Bernard. Doctor of Medicine in 1864 (thesis on animal transplants), Doctor of Science in 1866, professor of physiology at Bordeaux in 1866 (it was the youngest professor in France) and then at the Sorbonne in 1869, he became a member of the Academy Science in 1882. He has written many textbooks for racist. It will help to establish the Republican racial paradigm that color the French colonization of his prejudices about the inequality of races.