Abstract

This chapter distinguishes three forms of experimentation in medical practice, emerging at different periods of the history of medicine: (1) clinical practice, (2) perilous trial of a new remedy, and (3) methodical, comparative trial. Focusing on these two latter forms of trials, the chapter examines the epistemic and ethical problems raised by medical experimentation. In particular, it presents the various historical models and types of proof (numerical method, laboratory experimentation and randomization) corresponding to comparative experimentation, which are combined in the contemporary RCT (Randomised Controlled Trials).