[Progress of clinical practice in European armies (1750-1800)]

This article demonstrates that, before the 19th century and the Paris Clinical School, new medical practice and new clinical teaching based on pathological anatomy (of organs and of tissues) and surgical experience and therapeutic experimentation developed in the military milieu, specifically because of the "auspicious" conditions found there. Over time, this military clinical experience permeated civilian medical practice as military practitioners often moved into civilian practice and collaborated and exchanged experience with their civilian or ex-military colleagues. These conditions, in different forms and at different rhythms, in the great European powers, also favoured a rapprochement between the different groups of medical practitioners--physicians, apothecaries and surgeons--initially in the military milieu, and subsequently in civilian society as well. Finally, the article shows that the coercive disciplinary structure of the military, where sick or wounded soldiers were particularly constrained to act as subjects of experience, experimentation, clinical teaching and anatomico-pathological research, was one of the conditions propitious to this growth of clinical practice.