Control and the Therapeutic Trial. Rhetoric and Experimentation in Britain, 1918-48. (Clio Medica 82). (Clio Medica)

Examines the development of the randomised controlled trial 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.