TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Chapter 5. Introduction to Clinical Experimentation A1 - Bigelow, Robert A2 - Lopes, Renato D. A2 - Harrington, Robert A. Y1 - 2013 N1 - T2 - Understanding Clinical Research AB - The practice of medicine is an art, performed for the healing and reduction in suffering of individual patients. Doctors practice their art through skilled application of available medical knowledge. Before the scientific and technological advances made in the last century, medical knowledge belonged to a select few and was passed from teachers to students as if from parents to children (see the first point in the Hippocratic Oath) (1). Although much had been learned through careful observation of human anatomy and disease, empirical evidence on prognoses and treatment outcomes was limited. Rational treatment decisions could be made deductively or on the basis of accepted beliefs; however, the inability to obtain extensive empirical evidence left the value of many treatments unproven and poorly understood. SN - PB - The McGraw-Hill Companies CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/03/29 UR - accessbiomedicalscience.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=57835465 ER -