[Biomedical investigation in Mexico].

Biomedical research as a professional specialty developed in the Western World in the following four stages: 1) primitive medicine based on magico-religious concepts; 2) hippocratic medicine (500 AD), which renounced supernatural ideas on disease; 3) scientific medicine (1543), which eschewed tradition and authority, and 4) finally in 1813, the first full-time professional biomedical investigator Claude Bernard was appointed in France. Notheless, the first full-time professional biomedical investigator in Mexico did not appear until 1939, and the number is still growing despite present restrictions to investigator growth and development.