[The origins of clinical pharmacology in France].

This text is a history of the early development of clinical pharmacology in France in the 60s and 70s. It relates the obstacles that needed to be surmounted to impose clinical trials, pharmacovigilance, therapeutic drug monitoring. It follows the evolution of regulations, and the constitution of a new hospital and academic discipline. This study shows the obstacles raised by an established medical tradition against a change in paradigm towards a scientific approach to the evaluation and clinical use of drugs. It relates a crucial moment of the history of French pharmacology, when French medicine entered the modern era.