Early methods could only provide answers in cases where the disease was common and the treatment effect dramatic. It was aimed at the educated lay man rather than the practising physician being published in English, not Latin. By 1700 some thirty scientific and medical journals had been established. Many were ephemeral with others being little more than the printed minute books of various societies. In their early days these were the controversial organs of their editors opinions but after the Medical Act of 1858 these journals became less politically radical.
Engineering provides another interesting example.
From the 1820 s, engineers' needs were met through magazines like the Mechanic s Magazine from which grew the technical journals, and in due course today s hobby, consumer and trade press. Engineering then underwent fragmentation to meet the needs of nineteenth century industry, with the founding of more learned journals, publishing research papers and news of innovations, like the Engineer and Engineering and then dedicated journals for branches like electrical engineering and metallurgy. At best allocation was achieved by simple alternation between control and intervention group in order of clinical presentation. Pinner M. A clinical trial of sanocrysin in pulmonary tuberculosis. There are now some 40,000 scientific journals published in the world, including around 16,000 biomedical titles.