Claude Bernard - Experimental Medicine

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The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will never understand what he finds.

Claude Bernard
To conserve health and to cure disease: Medicine is still pursuing a scientific solution of this problem, which has confronted it from the first.

Claude Bernard
It is not given to man to alter the cosmic phenomena of the whole universe nor even those of the earth; but the advances of science enable him to alter the phenomena within his reach.

Claude Bernard
Reasoning will always be correct when applied to accurate notions and precise facts; but it can lead only to error when the notions or facts on which it rests were originally tainted with error or inaccuracy.

Claude Bernard
Facts are neither great nor small in themselves.

Claude Bernard
Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.

Claude Bernard
But physicians have nothing to do with what is called the law of large numbers, a law which, according to a great mathematician's expression, is always true in general and false in particular.

Claude Bernard
Another very frequent application of mathematics to biology is the use of averages which, in medicine and physiology, leads, so to speak, necessarily to error... By destroying the biological character of phenomena, the use of averages in physiology and medicine usually give only apparent accuracy to the results.

Claude Bernard
We must not deceive ourselves: morals do not forbid making experiments on one's neighbour or one's self; in everyday life, men do nothing but experiment on one another.

Claude Bernard
The first requirement in using statistics is that the facts treated shall be reduced to comparable units.

Claude Bernard
The nature of our mind leads us to seek the essence or the why of things.

Claude Bernard
Real science exists, then, only from the moment when a phenomenon is accurately defined as to its nature and rigorously determined in relation to its material conditions, that is, when its law is known. Before that, we have only groping and empiricism.

Claude Bernard
Men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So... these despisers of their fellows... make experiments only to destroy a theory, instead of to seek the truth.

Claude Bernard
If the facts used as a basis of reasoning are ill-established or erroneous, everything will crumble or be falsified; and it is thus that errors in scientific theories most often originate in errors of fact.

Claude Bernard
The minds that rise and become really great are never self-satisfied, but still continue to strive.

Claude Bernard
A discovery is generally an unforeseen relation not included in theory.

Claude Bernard
General physiology is the basic biological science toward which all others converge.

Claude Bernard
It is generally agreed that synthesis reunites what analysis has divided, and that synthesis therefore verifies analysis, of which it is merely the counterproof or necessary complement.

Claude Bernard
A physiologist is not a man of fashion, he is a man of science, absorbed by the scientific idea which he pursues: he no longer hears the cry of animals, he no longer sees the blood that flows, he sees only his idea and perceives only organisms concealing problems which he intends to solve.

Claude Bernard
A great discovery is a fact whose appearance in science gives rise to shining ideas, whose light dispels many obscurities and shows us new paths.

Claude Bernard
Theories are like a stairway; by climbing, science widens its horizon more and more, because theories embody and necessarily include proportionately more facts as they advance.

Claude Bernard
Men of science must not halt on the road; they must climb ever higher and strive toward perfection; they must always seek as long as they see anything to be found.

Claude Bernard
Experimentation is undeniably harder in medicine than in any other science; but for that very reason, it was never so necessary, and indeed so indispensable.

Claude Bernard
Science has just the privilege of teaching us what we do not know, by replacing feeling with reason and experience and clearly showing us the present boundaries of our knowledge.

Claude Bernard
An anticipative idea or an hypothesis is, then, the necessary starting point for all experimental reasoning. Without it, we could not make any investigation at all nor learn anything; we could only pile up sterile observations. If we experiment without a preconceived idea, we should move at random...

Claude Bernard
A fact is nothing in itself, it has value only through the idea connected with it or through the proof it supplies.

Claude Bernard
Good methods can teach us to develop and use to better purpose the faculties with which nature has endowed us, while poor methods may prevent us from turning them to good account. Thus the genius of inventiveness, so precious in the sciences, may be diminished or even smothered by a poor method, while a good method may increase and develop it.

Claude Bernard
Medical personality is placed above science by physicians themselves; they seek their authority in tradition, in doctrines or in medical tact. This state of affairs is the clearest of proofs that the experimental method has by no means come into its own in medicine.

Claude Bernard
If we mean to build up the biological sciences, and to study fruitfully the complex phenomena which occur in living beings, whether in the physiological or the pathological state, we must first of all lay down principles of experimentation, and then apply them to physiology, pathology and therapeutics.

Claude Bernard
Men of science, then, do not seek for the pleasure of seeking; they seek the truth to possess it, and they possess it already within the limits expressed in the present state of science.

Claude Bernard