25 / 92
350
YEARS
OF
SCIENCE
25
Medical empiricism: Seated
figure with sores (Mexico,
Nayarit, 200 B.C.-A.D. 500)
© LACMA
Evolution in life expectancy during the 350 last years in
France, with the major causes of increase
© Photo Researchers, Inc - Alamy
WŚĂƌŵĂĐĞƵƟĐĂůƐ
80
50
20
2000
1900
1800
1600
Vaccina
Ɵ
on
Ɛ
Hygiène
Food
>ŝǀŝŶŐ ĐŽŶĚŝƟŽŶƐ
Life expectanty (
LJĞĂƌƐͿ
Claude Bernard by Léon Lhermitte (oil painting, 1889)
The Statue Within
: “
He could do nothing for
me; besides, genetics did not interest him.
”
Does this mean that medicine was really
born but 70 years ago, and that the early
days of medical research in France were
painful?
A great deal of the answer is no, for many have contributed
to making sure science met and fertilized medicine. The tra-
dition of medical empiricism, the quality of observation – shared by
Laennec, Bichat, Corvisart ("the School of Paris") – in the early 19
th
Century laid
the foundations. Thus, as early as 1796, Jenner administered efficient vaccines against smallpox; in 1847,
Ignace Philippe Semmelweis, who did not know microbes existed, understood that if doctors and midwives
washed their hands after dissection and before delivery, the rate of puerperal fever and mortality asso-
ciated to it would drop considerably, thus establishing on simple observation the foundations for hygiene.
The 19
th
Century produced the essential concepts and the major discoveries that enabled medicine to
rise in the 20
th
Century. Let’s mention,
obviously, how significant was the
notion of experimentation introduced
by Claude Bernard as he wrote, in
An
Introduction to the Study of Experi-
mental Medicine
(1865): “
Experimen-
tal medicine, like all the experimental
sciences, (...) is (…) the science which
tries to reach the immediate causes of
vital phenomena in the healthy and
in the morbid state
.” He created the
concept of physiology, while Gregor
Mendel defined the laws of genetics
and Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch
discovered microbes.