Since its inception in World War II, the clinical trial has evolved into a standard procedure in determining therapeutic efficacy in many Western industrial democracies. Its features include a "control" group of patients that do not receive the experimental treatment, the random allocation of patients to either the experimental or control group, and the use of blind assessment so that the researchers do not know which patients are in either group. Even though it has been only within the past generation that the clinical trial has moved to the forefront of medical research, comparative statistics in a therapeutic context has a much longer history. From that history J. Rosser Matthews chooses to discuss three crucial debates: that among clinicians before the Parisian Academy of Medicine in 1837, the debate in the German physiological literature during the 1850s, and, in the early twentieth century, the debate over the bacteriologist's diagnostic technique involving the "opsonic index." Matthews demonstrates that despite the very real differences separating clinician, physiologist, and bacteriologist, they all shared an antipathy toward the methods of the statistician. Since they viewed medical judgment as a form of "tacit knowledge," they downplayed the concerns of the medical statistician who was attempting to make medical inference into something explicit and quantitative. Only when "medical decision-making" moved from the cloistered confines of professional medical expertise into the arena of open political debate could the medical statistician (and the clinical trial) gain the upper hand.

Since its inception in World War II, the clinical trial has evolved into a standard procedure in determining therapeutic efficacy in many Western industrial democracies. Its features include a "control" group of patients that do not receive the experimental treatment, the random allocation of patients to either the experimental or control group, and the use of blind assessment so that the researchers do not know which patients are in either group. Even though it has been only within the past generation that the clinical trial has moved to the forefront of medical research, comparative statistics in a therapeutic context has a much longer history. From that history J. Rosser Matthews chooses to discuss three crucial debates: that among clinicians before the Parisian Academy of Medicine in 1837, the debate in the German physiological literature during the 1850s, and, in the early twentieth century, the debate over the bacteriologist's diagnostic technique involving the "opsonic index."Matthews demonstrates that despite the very real differences separating clinician, physiologist, and bacteriologist, they all shared an antipathy toward the methods of the statistician. Since they viewed medical judgment as a form of "tacit knowledge, " they downplayed the concerns of the medical statistician who was attempting to make medical inference into something explicit and quantitative. Only when "medical decision-making" moved from the cloistered confines of professional medical expertise into the arena of open political debate could the medical statistician (and the clinical trial) gain the upper hand.

Presenting a new way of thinking about the risks of medical innovation, this volume considers the issues from a social historical perspective, and studies specific cases in their respective contexts.

A three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee as a health-care reporter for the "Chicago Tribune" illustrates serious flaws in contemporary medical practice and shows ways to improve care and save tens of thousands of lives.

Medical Sciences is a component of Encyclopedia of Biological, Physiological and Health Sciences in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. This 2-volume set contains several chapters, each of size 5000-30000 words, with perspectives, applications and extensive illustrations. It carries state-of-the-art knowledge in the fields of Medical Sciences and is aimed, by virtue of the several applications, at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students, Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers and NGOs.

Medical and Health Sciences is a component of Encyclopedia of Biological, Physiological and Health Sciences in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. These volume set contains several chapters, each of size 5000-30000 words, with perspectives, applications and extensive illustrations. It carries state-of-the-art knowledge in the fields of Medical and Health Sciences and is aimed, by virtue of the several applications, at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students, Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers and NGOs.

Listen to podcast with the author How do doctors decide whether their drugs, or other treatments, actually work? In practice this can be fiendishly difficult. Nowadays the gold standard is the randomised controlled trial (RCT). But the RCT is a recent invention, and the story of how it came to dominate therapeutic evaluation from the latter half of the twentieth century involves acrimony, confrontation, and manipulation of the powerful rhetoric of ‘control’. Control and the Therapeutic Trial examines the development of the RCT from the eclectic collection of methodologies available to practitioners in the early-twentieth century. In particular, it explores the British Medical Research Council’s (MRC) exploitation of the term ‘controlled’ to help establish its own ‘controlled trials’ as the gold standard for therapeutic evaluation, and, ultimately, the MRC itself as the proper authority to adjudicate on therapeutic efficacy. This rhetorical power still clings, and is exploited today. Control and the Therapeutic Trial will be of interest not only to historians of twentieth-century medicine and practising clinicians who take therapeutic decisions, but to anyone who seeks a broader insight into the forces that shaped, and control, the modern controlled trial.

In this volume of essays, leading scholars take a fresh look at the meaning and significance of the Paris Clinical School for the history of medicine and reassess the analysis of the two most noted authors on the topic in the twentieth century, Erwin H. Ackernecht and Michel Foucault.

The Reader's Guide to the History of Science looks at the literature of science in some 550 entries on individuals (Einstein), institutions and disciplines (Mathematics), general themes (Romantic Science) and central concepts (Paradigm and Fact). The history of science is construed widely to include the history of medicine and technology as is reflected in the range of disciplines from which the international team of 200 contributors are drawn.

This core textbook introduces the key concepts, theories, models and frameworks used in implementation science, and supports readers applying them in research projects. The first part of the book focuses on the theory of implementation science, providing a discussion of its emergence from the evidence-based practice movement and its connections to related topics such as innovation research. It includes chapters looking at a wide range of theories, methods and frameworks currently used in implementation science, and a chapter focusing on suitable theories that could be imported from other fields. The first part also addresses strategies and outcomes of implementation and discusses how researchers can build causal pathways adapted to their study. The second part of the book focuses squarely on putting the theory of implementation science to work in practice, with chapters discussing research methods used in the field and how to select the most appropriate approach. This section also features several chapters presenting in-depth case studies of specific applications. This multidisciplinary text is an essential resource for graduate students from a range of healthcare backgrounds taking courses on implementation science, as well as researchers from medicine, nursing, public health, allied health, economics, political science, sociology and engineering.