Gideon Harvey’s 1683 proposal for a cluster-controlled trial of medical treatments

We present proposals for two controlled studies of medical treatments published in 1683 by the Anglo-Dutch physician Gideon Harvey (1639–1702). First is a controlled trial of Jesuit’s (cinchona) bark with and without bitter additives. Second is a comparison of two ‘parallel’ towns in Essex, England, where conditions (‘air’) and disease burden are similar. The latter is the earliest proposal of what today is called a cluster-controlled study, i.e. comparing interventions in two established populations. This methodology only re-emerges in the twentieth century and is key to interventional research in medicine, public health, education, and international development. There is no evidence that Harvey’s cluster-controlled trial ever took place. His proposals arose from bitter conflict with London’s College of Physicians. Harvey’s proposals for ‘plain and necessary instructions, rules, and remedies in one single sheet [of paper]’ echo Bacon’s call for physicians to standardize their erratic treatments. New evidence is examined to reinterpret Harvey’s historical legacy solely as a ‘prater’ and ‘quack’. This is most evident in James Lind’s 1753 high praise for Harvey’s writing on scurvy. We also present new information about Harvey’s biography including his 1639 baptism as a ‘subject … of ye King of Great Brittaine resident in the Haghe’.