Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences
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J Hist Med Allied Sci · Oct 2007
Biography Historical ArticleClaude Bernard and an introduction to the study of experimental medicine: "physical vitalism," dialectic, and epistemology.
This article explores the profound impact of the thought of Claude Bernard (1813-78) and his philosophy of experimentalism elaborated in his masterwork An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine. I argue that Bernard's far-ranging theoretical impact on medicine and biology marks the end of conventional vitalism and the elusive notion of a "vital force" as a legitimate scientific concept. His understanding of medicine is as epistemologically significant in its time as Newton's contribution was to the physical sciences in the seventeenth century. ⋯ Bernard's thoughts on the nature of experiment put an end to "systems" in medicine, ironically by replacing all previous medical philosophies with the all-embracing "system" of experiment. And yet, while "vital forces" fade after Bernard, a form of vitalism still flourishes. Even in Bernard's own work, in the struggle with concepts like determinism, complexity, and causality, there is a realization of the unique character of living function in a kind of "physical vitalism."
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The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) establishes new standards for the protection of private health information in the United States. The Privacy Rule, one of the specific regulatory provisions of the act, went into effect 14 April 2003 for covered health care providers, institutions, and businesses. The Privacy Rule directly affected medical archivists and their collections. ⋯ The Privacy Rule is the first major regulation that protects the privacy of the deceased in perpetuity. It establishes requirements that researchers must satisfy in order to gain access to "individually identifiable health information" held by HIPAA-protected institutions. While these requirements will burden historians in some cases, the Privacy Rule could open up opportunities for well-prepared historians to work with a more extensive range of twentieth-century documents.