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In a general and somewhat vague fashion we tend to assert that the ancients did not understand the art of experimenting. To my knowledge J. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire (1) was the first among modern thinkers who insisted that in antiquity experiments as well as observations were made. To be sure, the same author states in his preface that experimentation was but in its embryonic stage in the writings of Aristotle and the ancient naturalists. In a similar vein, we learn from L. Bourgey (8) that the authors of the corpus hippocraticum—who were not themselves members of the authentic Hippocratic school—used experimentation as the criterion of truth, even though their experiments served to illustrate and imitate a phenomenon rather than to reproduce it. Bacon is considered the father of experimental philosophy, and the history of medicine regards William Harvey as the first experimental physiologist. It is true that all these men conducted experiments. However, making experiments is not the same as the experimental method. The credit for having created this belongs to Claude Bernard.¹

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-40265-8_18

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