[Medical empiricism from one myth to another. A critical reading of Foucault's Birth of Clinic].

The new history of the clinic, developed mainly after the publication of Othmar Keel's L'avènement de la médecine clinique moderne en Europe, 1750-1815 in 2001, invites the scholars to turn upside down the chronology adopted by Michel Foucault in his classic Birth of the Clinic. This paper investigates the philosophical consequences of this chronological displacement, showing that the medical empiricism of the clinic cannot have the characteristics attributed by Foucault. If the myth of the purity of such empiricism cannot be taken seriously anymore thanks to Foucault, is has been substituted by the myth of the creation of the clinic on the basis of enlightened empiricism. The clinic is, however, older than empiricism à la Condillac. It refers to an earlier medical empiricism developed in the 17th century which in its turn allowed for Condillac's philosophy. The clinic had in fact to choose between an elder medical empiricism and a new chemical empirism that appeared in the late 17th century. But the clinic was not a creation of the Enlightenment.