Translation

“In 1918 I published a very extensive communication (Bingel 1918) reporting my observations on nearly 1000 diphtheria patients, of whom one half had been treated with serum containing anti-toxin and the other with ordinary (so called simple) serum. I had proceeded in the following way: exactly in the order of admission [to the hospital] every first case received anti-toxin serum and every second case simple serum, without regard to the age of the patient or the severity of the disease. Through this “alternating” method, I believed I would achieve, with a large sample of patients, statistically unchallengeable results (see Martini). I kept the identity of the serum type strictly secret from the assistant physicians and the nurses; nobody other than me knew about it.  I hold this circumstance to be very particularly important; for it is only in this way that an unprejudiced evaluation can be guaranteed.”

Translation by Ulrich Tröhler