PROSPERO

The validity of conclusions drawn from systematic reviews depends fundamentally on the reliability of the results from the studies they synthesize. Over more than six decades, instruments for assessin...

The original version of what became the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, which was originally published as Section VI of the Cochrane Toolkit.

James Lind Library quiz 1.1 - Why treatment uncertainties should be addressed, including audio version of the essay.

The introduction of randomized controlled experiments in agriculture in the 1920s and 1930s sometimes involved designing studies to make more than one comparison within the same experiment. Partly bec...

Introduction The introduction of insulin for treating patients with diabetes mellitus must rate as Canada’s earliest contribution to the welfare of humankind. The report by Banting and his colleagues ...

Introduction A very influential paper in rheumatology is the paper by Ritchie and colleagues (Ritchie et al. 1968) which introduced what became known as the “Ritchie Articular Index” (RAI), a ...

Introduction There is a poignant before and after photolithograph of a Victorian lady in the 1878 transactions of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London (Figure 1) (Ord 1878). ...

Contribution to a book arising from a symposium by the UK Office of Health Economics in 1978 in which Archie Cochrane wrote: “It is surely a great criticism of our ...

Observed annually on June 1, World Milk Day unites countries, organizations, and communities to recognize and amplify the dairy sector's impact.

The Ben Cao Tu Jing (Atlas of Materia Medica) was first published in 1061 in China, during the reign of Ren Zhong, one of the emperors of the Song Dynasty ...

Who was James Lind? Visitors to the Edinburgh University quadrangle in Teviot Place, which used to house the Medical School, are unlikely to miss the large plaque put up in ...

The James Lind Library announces a new section to cover Patient and Public Involvement (PPIE) and invites contributions from readers.

Abstract The advent of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in mainland China remains largely unexplored. We offer here what we hope is a useful starting-point. We begin with a brief account ...

“It is idle to attribute the relief of pain to a substance given in a series of injections when the ritual of the treatment itself, as well as numerous other ...

Abstract Tuberculosis-related clinical trials in the West were a critical site of trial innovation throughout the twentieth century. And tuberculosis treatment articles and trials, from the late 1940s...

Introduction The rationale for and design of controlled clinical trials as we know them today developed during the first half of the 20th century. The use of alternation to generate ...

More than two and a half centuries ago, James Lind’s controlled trial showed that citrus fruits were effective in treating scurvy (Tröhler 2005). Remarkably, Lind’s publication not only reported these...

“[I]n much medical literature there is inadequate recognition and treatment of questions of chance, of the allowance to be made for small samples, and of natural variation from sample to ...

The first randomized trial of aspirin for heart attack Archie Cochrane, my predecessor as director of the UK Medical Research Council’s Epidemiology Research Unit in Cardiff, was inclined to play ...

“My skill, if any, was, I believe, in offering the clinician something simple that he could understand – and all that I could understand. If one had started with something ...

Randomisation is one of many statistical ideas that have permeated medical research but are imperfectly understood (Altman 1991) Introduction The emergence of the randomised controlled trial (RCT) ran...

I brought a chest specialist here. He says I have got to go into a sanatorium, probably for about 4 months. It’s an awful bore, however perhaps it’s all for ...

Recognition of shared interests and the origins of a friendship I came to know Doug Altman during the 1980s when we were both members of the editorial team at the ...

This video covers the first section of the James Lind Library essays, exploring why it took so long for fair assessments of medical treatments to develop.

A tradition that brings joy — with so many unique designs to choose from, it's easy to find the perfect way to spread holiday cheer.