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Previous Volume 334:670 March 7, 1996 Number 10 Next

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By J. Rosser Matthews. 195 pp. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1995. $39.50. ISBN 0-691-03794-9.

Succinctly put, Matthews's book chronicles some of the pivotal events in the evolution of the art of medicine into the science of medicine. Starting with the debates surrounding Pierre Louis's numerical method in the 1800s, we traverse a series of intellectual, sociological, and political confrontations leading up to the introduction of the modern randomized clinical trial.

The first portion of the book focuses on the resistance to the aggregation that was inherent in Louis's numerical method. Louis stressed the need for carefully observed and recorded data. He championed the use of summary statistics as a means of investigating therapeutic efficacy. . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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