Emergence of quantification in clinical investigation and the quest for certainty in therapeutics: The road from Hammurabi to Kefauver

Throughout most of history, medical knowledge was descriptive in nature and derived from the work of individual investigators of independent mind pursuing careful but often chance observations. Using deductive reasoning, these findings were then generalized, authoritatively presented, and dogmatically promulgated. This, coupled with firmly grounded principles of divine determinism, precluded any serious consideration of randomness, even when...