[Evolution of medical statistics and epidemiology in clinical scientific research in the 20th century]

In the first decades of this century clinical scientific research was carried out within the way of thinking of the experimental medicine of Claude Bernard, in which physicians-researchers tried to replicate laboratory findings at the bedside. Two developments ensued: the advent of the so-called fundamental disciplines with experiments at the cellular and molecular level, and the statistical and epidemiological way of thinking in medicine. Important in the beginning of statistics was Austin Bradford Hill. Chronic disease epidemiology originated in Britain, but was further developed by investigators of the universities of Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Yale (United States of America) and of McMaster (Canada). In the Netherlands epidemiology departments were introduced in the universities in the seventies and their growth was stimulated by fund-raising and collecting charities.