Commentary

• Adams CE (2009). James Crichton Browne and controlled evaluation of drug treatment for mental illness.
• Armitage P (2002). Randomisation and alternation: a note on Diehl et al.
• Armitage P (2009). A note on the statistical analysis of the 1948 MRC streptomycin trial.
• Bastian H (2004). Down and almost out in Scotland: George Orwell, tuberculosis and getting streptomycin in 1948.
• Birbeck E (2011). The Royal Hospital Haslar: from Lind to the 21st century.
• Boylston AW (2008). Did clinical science begin in 1767?
• Boylston AW (2010). Thomas Nettleton and the dawn of quantitative assessments of the effects of medical interventions.
• Boylston AW (2011). Daniel Sutton, a forgotten 18th century clinician scientist.
• Boylston AW (2012). The origins of inoculation.
• Boylston AW, Williams AE (2008). Zabdiel Boylston’s evaluation of inoculation against smallpox.
• Bracken MB (2008). Why animal studies are often poor predictors of human reactions to exposure.
• Bryder L (2010). The Medical Research Council and clinical trial methodologies before the 1940s: the failure to develop a ‘scientific’ approach.
• Chalmers I (2002). MRC Therapeutic Trials Committee's report on serum treatment of lobar pneumonia, BMJ 1934.
• Chalmers I (2006). Joseph Asbury Bell and the birth of randomized trials.
• Chalmers I (2010). Why the 1948 MRC trial of streptomycin used treatment allocation based on random numbers.
• Chalmers I, Clarke M (2002). J Guy Scadding and the move from alternation to randomization.
• Chalmers I, Dukan E, Podolsky S, Davey Smith G (2011). The advent of fair treatment allocation schedules in clinical trials during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
• Chalmers I, Toth B (2009). 19th century controlled trials to test whether belladonna prevents scarlet fever.
• Clarke M (2004). The 1944 patulin trial of the British Medical Research Council: an example of how concerted common purpose can get reliable answers to important questions very quickly.
• Cochrane AL, Blythe M (2004). Sickness in Salonica.
• Cockerill A, Goble PJ (2012). Thomas Graham Balfour, pioneering medical statistician and stern disciplinarian.
• Cook H (2010). Testing the effects of Jesuit’s bark in the Chinese Emperor’s court.
• Cox DR (2009). Randomization for concealment.
• Davey Smith G (2006). Capitalising on Mendelian randomization to assess the effects of treatments.
• Dean ME (2003). 'An innocent deception': placebo controls in the St Petersburg homeopathy trial, 1829-30.
• Dean ME (2003). The homeopathic mustard gas trials of 1941–42.
• Dean ME (2009). Comparative evaluation of homeopathy and allopathy within the Parisian hospital system, 1849-51.
• Diaz M, Neuhauser D (2004). Lessons from using randomization to assess gold treatment for tuberculosis.
• Doll R (2003). Controlled trials testing two or more treatments simultaneously.
• Donaldson IML (2004). Ambroise Paré’s account in the Oeuvres of 1575 of new methods of treating gunshot wounds and burns.
• Donaldson IML (2005). Mesmer’s 1780 proposal for a controlled trial to test his method of treatment using ‘Animal Magnetism’.
• Donaldson IML (2008). Francis Bacon's comments on the power of negative observations in his Novum Organum.
• Donaldson IML (2008). Lavoisier's comments on the art of drawing conclusions from experiments.
• Doyle D (2011). Thomas MacLagan’s 1876 demonstration of the dramatic effects of salicin in rheumatic fever.
• Edwards M (2010). Dora Colebrook and the evaluation of light therapy.
• Elwood P (2004). The first randomized trial of aspirin for heart attack and the advent of systematic overviews of trials.
• Farewell V, Johnson A (2010). The first British textbook of medical statistics.
• Farewell V, Johnson A (2011). The origins of Austin Bradford Hill’s classic textbook of medical statistics.
• Ferroni E, Jefferson T, Gachelin G (2011). Angelo Celli and research on the prevention of malaria in Italy a century ago.
• Fox DM (2011). Systematic reviews and health policy: the influence of a project on perinatal care since 1988.
• Furberg CD (2009). How should one analyse and interpret clinical trials in which patients don’t take the treatments assigned to them?
• Gøtzsche PC (2004). Niels Finsen’s treatment for lupus vulgaris.
• Gartlehner G, Stepper K (2011). Julius Wagner-Jauregg: pyrotherapy, Simultanmethode, and ‘racial hygiene’.
• Gluud C (2010). Danish contributions to the evaluation of serum therapy for diphtheria in the 1890s.
• Gluud C, Hilden J (2008). Povl Heiberg’s 1897 methodological study on the statistical method as an aid in therapeutic trials.
• Gong Y, Gluud C (2003). Commentary on the Ben Cao Tu Jing (11th century). Atlas of Materia Medica. Song Dynasty (960-1279).
• Hampton J (2004). An early parallel group trial in cardiology.
• Hemminki E (2005). Commentary on an early placebo controlled trial in Finland.
• Houston C (2004). Ferguson's BCG research - Canada's first randomized clinical trial?
• Hróbjartsson A, Gøtzsche PC, Gluud C (1988). The controlled clinical trial turns 100 years: Fibiger's trial of serum treatment of diphtheria.
• Huth EJ (2005). Quantitative evidence for judgments on the efficacy of inoculation for the prevention of smallpox: England and New England in the 1700s.
• Huth EJ (2006). Jules Gavarret’s Principes Généraux de Statistique Médicale: a pioneering text on the statistical analysis of the results of treatments.
• Huth EJ (2006). Transatlantic ideas on the philosophy of therapeutics in the middle of the 19th century.
• Huth EJ (2008). The move toward setting scientific standards for the content of medical review articles.
• Hytten F (2009). Isabella Leitch’s contributions to the development of systematic reviews of research evidence.
• Jefferson T (2006). Why the MRC randomized trials of whooping cough (pertussis) vaccines remain important more than half a century after they were done.
• JLL Bulletin Editors (2010). A note on James Lind Library records included to illustrate dramatic effects of treatments.
• JLL Bulletin Editors (2010). Commentary on Rapport général sur les prix décernés en 1862. Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale de Médecine XXVI, Paris: Ballière, pp xxii-xxxv.
• Joosse NP, Pormann PE (2008). Archery, mathematics, and conceptualising inaccuracies in medicine in 13th century Iraq and Syria.
• Kaptchuk T (2004). Early use of blind assessment in a homeopathic scientific experiment.
• Kerr CE, Milne I, Kaptchuk TJ (2007). William Cullen and a missing mind-body link in the early history of placebos.
• Klar N, Donner A (2002). The impact of EF Lindquist's text "Statistical Analysis in Educational Research" on cluster randomization.
• Löwy I (2010). Martin Arrowsmith's clinical trial: scientific precision and heroic medicine.
• Lee MR (2004). The miracle of St. Alfege’s: seventy years on.
• Loudon I (2002). An early Medical Research Council controlled trial of vitamins for preventing infection.
• Loudon I (2002). Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis' studies of death in childbirth.
• Loudon I (2002). The use of historical controls and concurrent controls to assess the effects of sulphonamides, 1936-1945.
• Louis-Courvoisier M (2007). An 18th century controlled trial prompted by a potential shortage of hospital beds.
• Maehle A-H (2011). Four early clinical studies to assess the effects of Peruvian bark.
• Mann H, Djulbegovic B (2004). Why comparisons must address genuine uncertainties.
• Marks HM (2006). The Kendrick-Eldering-(Frost) pertussis vaccine field trial.
• Marks HM (2007). James Angus Doull and the well-controlled common cold.
• McPherson K, Bunker JP (2006). Costs, risks and benefits of surgery: a milestone in the development of health services research.
• Middleton J (2008). Pellagra and the blues song ‘Cornbread, meat and black molasses’.
• Milne I, Chalmers I (2002). Hamilton's report of a controlled trial of bloodletting, 1816.
• Moore W (2009). John Hunter: learning from natural experiments, ‘placebos’, and the state of mind of a patient in the 18th century.
• Morabia A (2004). Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis and the evaluation of bloodletting.
• Morabia A (2006). Joseph Goldberger’s research on the prevention of pellagra.
• Morabia A (2007). Claude Bernard, statistics, and comparative trials.
• Morabia A (2010). Edward Jenner’s 1798 report of challenge experiments demonstrating the protective effects of cowpox against smallpox.
• Nasser M, Tibi A (2006). Ibn Hindu and the science of medicine.
• Nasser M, Tibi A, Savage-Smith E (2007). Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine: 11th century rules for assessing the effects of drugs.
• Neuhauser D, Diaz M (2007). Use of rotation to allocate patients to homeopathic or regular medical services in Cook County Hospital, Chicago, 1882.
• Neuhauser D, Diaz M, Chalmers I (2007). A puzzling omission in a great medical textbook edited by a pioneer of controlled trials.
• Nunn JF (2008). A treatment that has stood the test of time for over three and a half millennia.
• Olsen SF (1999). Theobald's trial in 1936 incorporated some aspects of randomisation. BMJ 318:1352, and Olsen SF (1998). The first clinical trial with true randomisation of individuals. BMJ.com
• Olsen SF (2002). The People's League of Health trial.
• Opinel A, Gachelin G (2010). French 19th century contributions to the development of treatments for diphtheria.
• Podolsky SH (2008). Jesse Bullowa, specific treatment for pneumonia, and the development of the controlled clinical trial.
• Podolsky SH, Davey Smith G (2011). Park’s story and Winters’ tale: alternate allocation clinical trials in turn of the Century America.
• Poisson, Dulong, Larrey et Double (1835). Recherches de statistique sur l’affection calculeuse, par M. le docteur Civiale. Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie de Sciences. Paris: Bachelier, 167-177.
• Pollock JI (2003). A controlled trial using a factorial design reported in 1946.
• Pollock JI (2005). Two controlled trials of supplementary feeding of British school children in the 1920s.
• Rennie D, Chalmers I (2009). Exposing the dangers to patients of medical reviews and textbooks that ignore scientific principles.
• Senn SJ (2003). Cushny and Peebles and optical isomers, 1905.
• Shannon H (2008). A statistical note on Karl Pearson’s 1904 meta-analysis.
• Sinclair L (2007). Recognising, treating and understanding pernicious anaemia.
• Slater SD (2010). The discovery of thyroid replacement therapy.
• Solis C (2011). Bartolomé Hidalgo de Agüero’s 16th century, evidence-based challenge to the orthodox management of wounds.
• Spain P, Kadan-Lottick N (2010). Observations of unprecedented remissions following novel treatment for acute leukemia in children in 1948.
• Spanager L (2005). Jansen’s 1910 use of a single blind experiment to assess the effects of radioactive water on rheumatic diseases.
• Stolberg M (2006). Inventing the randomized double-blind trial: The Nürnberg salt test of 1835.
• Stoll S (2004). Paul Martini's Methodology of therapeutic investigation.
• Stylianou C, Kelnar C (2008). The introduction of successful treatment of diabetes mellitus with insulin.
• Sutton G (2004). James Lind aboard Salisbury.
• Thacker SB (2009). How I came to write papers for clinicians in the late 1980s about improving the quality of reviews.
• Tibi S (2005). Al-Razi and Islamic medicine in the 9th Century.
• Tröhler U (2003). Cheselden's 1740 presentation of data on age-specific mortality after lithotomy.
• Tröhler U (2003). Edward Alanson 1782: responsibility in surgical innovation.
• Tröhler U (2003). James Lind and scurvy: 1747 to 1795.
• Tröhler U (2003). James Lind and the evaluation of clinical practice.
• Tröhler U (2003). James Lind at Haslar Hospital 1758-1774: a methodological theorist.
• Tröhler U (2003). John Clark 1780 & 1792: learning from properly kept records.
• Tröhler U (2003). MacLean 1818: comparing like with like and recognising ethical double standards in therapeutic experimentation.
• Tröhler U (2003). Withering's 1785 appeal for caution when reporting on a new medicine.
• Tröhler U (2007). An early 18th century proposal for improving medicine by tabulating and analysing practice.
• Tröhler U (2010). Adolf Bingel’s blinded, controlled comparison of different anti-diphtheritic sera in 1918.
• Tröhler U (2010). Towards endocrinology: Theodor Kocher’s 1883 account of the unexpected effects of total ablation of the thyroid.
• Vandenbroucke JP (2003). Adolphe Vorderman's 1897 study of beriberi among prison inmates in the Dutch East Indies: an exemplar of scrupulous efforts to avoid bias.
• Vandenbroucke JP (2003). Aspirin: an unanticipated beneficial effect.
• Vandenbroucke JP (2003). Thalidomide: an unanticipated adverse effect.
• Vandenbroucke JP (2003). The contribution of William Fletcher's 1907 report to finding a cause and cure for beriberi.
• Volmink J (2005). The willow as a Hottentot (Khoikhoi) remedy for rheumatic fever.
• Weingarten S (2003). Food in Daniel 1:1-16: the first controlled experiment?
• Wessely S (2009). Surgery for the treatment of psychiatric illness: the need to test untested theories.
• Wickenden JVS (2011). The strange disappearances of James Lind.
• Williams KJ (2009). The introduction of ‘chemotherapy’ using arsphenamine - the first magic bullet.