French empiricism

“Louis’s construction of a numerical therapeutic rationale caused a great stir in France and prompted a series of academic debates about its merits during the 1830s. . . Louis’s approach was grounded in early nineteenth-century French hospital medicine. . . . Quantification was believed to override individual clinical judgments, creating the danger that therapeutic decisions would be made by the application of predetermined formulas arrived at through statistical calculations. Such a change in the decision-making process of the medical profession was perceived as a great threat to the physicians’ identity and social standing. However, the appeal of a statistically informed therapy remained somewhat restricted to a small elite of academic Parisian physicians primarily active in institutional environments where more universalizing tendencies flourished naturally. It made less sense in private medical practice contexts where therapeutic specificity was still essential in supporting professional identity” (Risse, 59-60).