He studied law, earning a doctorate in Paris; then, under the influence of the zoologist Louis Pierre Gratiolet (1815–1865), he took up physiology, becoming one of Claude Bernard's most brilliant students.

"[1] From 14 November 1881 to 30 January 1882 he was minister of education and worship in Gambetta's short-lived cabinet, and in 1881 he created a great sensation by a lecture on modern Catholicism, delivered in a Paris theatre, in which he poured ridicule on the fables and follies of the chief religious tracts and handbooks that circulated especially in the south of France.

His classical work, La Pression barometrique (1878), embodies researches that gained him the biennial prize of 20,000 francs from the Academy of Sciences in 1875, and is a comprehensive investigation on the physiological effects of air-pressure, both above and below the normal.

In The Phrenological journal and science of health (1883) it was claimed that he held an atheistic belief[9] After about 1880, he produced several elementary textbooks of scientific instruction and also various publications on educational and allied subjects.

Widely used in French schools for decades as the basis for scientific education, his book La Deuxième année d'enseignement scientifique (34th edition: Armand Colin, 1896) claimed that "European whites" are far superior and more intelligent than blacks, people from Asia, and Native Americans, among others.