Theobald's trial in 1936 incorporated some aspects of randomisation

EDITOR—The issue of 31 October marking 50 years of the randomised controlled trial, with historical accounts on trial methodology, made me look up the trial undertaken by Theobald. He studied the combined effect of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C supplementation on toxaemia in 100 pregnant women, apparently using true individual randomisation. 1 2 This was in 1936, a decade before the streptomycin trial.3

Although not all aspects of the randomisation procedure are entirely clear from Theobald's report, 1 2 he was obviously a thoughtful researcher. He provided evidence that the groups had similar age and parity distributions, had a statistician (E S Pearson) to assess the extent to which his results (that symptoms of toxaemia were less common in …