title: How progress has been achieved in medicine.
abstract: Modern medicine is the result of a long historical development. It evolved from instinct and experience in prehistoric times to observation and reasoning in the Hippocratic period, to the formulation of a scientific system in Galen's period and experimentation in the 19th century. Philosophically, Aristotelian rationalism was challenged by Bacon's scientific empiricism, and C. Bernard's scientific determinism by today's indeterminism. Developments in medicine have always depended on the stage of the development of human societies, socioeconomically, scientifically, technologically and culturally.
authors.forename: D V
authors.initials: DV
authors.lastname: Razis
mesh_terms: D006115:Greece; D006666:History of Medicine