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Claude Bernard -
Experimental Medicine
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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
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Considered by itself, the experimental method is nothing but reasoning by whose help we methodically submit our ideas to experience, — the experience of facts.
Claude Bernard
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The first requirement in using statistics is that the facts treated shall be reduced to comparable units.
Claude Bernard
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Facts are neither great nor small in themselves.
Claude Bernard
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Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.
Claude Bernard
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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
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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
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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
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The science of vital phenomena must have the same foundations as the science of phenomena of inorganic bodies, and... there is no difference in this respect between the principles of biological science and those of physico-chemical science.
Claude Bernard
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Well-observed facts, though brought to light by passing theories, will never die; they are the material on which alone the house of science will at last be built.
Claude Bernard
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An experimenter can never deny a fact that he has seen and observed, merely because he cannot rediscover it.
Claude Bernard
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It has often been said that, to make discoveries, one must be ignorant. This opinion, mistaken in itself, nevertheless conceals a truth. It means that it is better to know nothing than to keep in mind fixed ideas based on theories whose confirmation we constantly seek, neglecting meanwhile everything that fails to agree with them.
Claude Bernard
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We may, of course strike a balance between what a living organism takes in as nourishment and what it gives out in excretions.... This would be like trying to tell what happens inside a house by watching what goes in by the door and what comes out by the chimney.
Claude Bernard
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The application of mathematics to natural phenomena is the aim of all science.
Claude Bernard
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Only within very narrow boundaries can man observe the phenomena which surround him; most of them naturally escape his senses, and mere observation is not enough.
Claude Bernard
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The better educated we are and the more acquired information we have, the better prepared shall we find our minds for making great and fruitful discoveries.
Claude Bernard
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In the patient who succumbed, the cause of death was evidently something which was not found in the patient who recovered; this something we must determine, and then we can act on the phenomena or recognize and foresee them accurately. But not by statistics shall we succeed in this; never have statistics taught anything, and never can they teach anything about the nature of the phenomenon.
Claude Bernard
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The goal of scientific physicians in their own science... is to reduce the indeterminate. Statistics therefore apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still indeterminate.
Claude Bernard
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In teaching man, experimental science results in lessening his pride more and more by proving to him every day that primary causes, like the objective reality of things, will be hidden from him forever and that he can only know relations.
Claude Bernard
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When entering on new ground we must not be afraid to express even risky ideas so as to stimulate research in all directions. As Priestley put it, we must not remain inactive through false modesty based on fear of being mistaken.
Claude Bernard
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The spontaneity enjoyed by beings endowed with life has been one of the principal objections urged against the use of experimentation in biological studies.
Claude Bernard
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There never are any unsuccessful experiments: they are all successful in their own definite conditions, so that negatives cannot nullify positive results.
Claude Bernard
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Physiologists should not be afraid to act somewhat at random, so as to try - permit me the common expression - fishing in troubled waters. This amounts to saying that, in the midst of the functional disturbances which they produce, they may hope to see some unexpected phenomena emerge which may give direction to their research.
Claude Bernard
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In science, the best precept is to alter and exchange our ideas as fast as science moves ahead.
Claude Bernard
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Our ideas are only intellectual instruments which we use to break into phenomena; we must change them when they have served their purpose, as we change a blunt lancet that we have used long enough.
Claude Bernard
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Quote of the day
Every hand and every hour should be devoted to rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.
Horace Mann
Claude Bernard
Creative Commons
Born:
July 12, 1813
Died:
February 10, 1878
(aged 64)
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