From Clinical Counting to Evidence-Based Medicine

Abstract

Several years ago, I gave a talk in Gerard Jorland’s seminar on thequantification debates that stirred the Parisian medical world duringthe 1830s. During question period, one of my listeners asked whetherthe “numerical method” advocated by P.C.A. Louis was in fact evi-dence-based medicine (ebm). The query struck me as historicallynaive; but both advocates and opponents of ebm have since made thisvery same connection; the latter use it to emphasize the historical legit-imacy of their enterprise, while the former argue that there is nothingparticularly original about ebm – old French wine with a new Canadianlabel.

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