The jacket illustration is a detail from Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy

by François Lemoyne.

Other splendid works by Professor Gaukroger are shown here.

In the United States a black market developed which had serious medical and social repercussions. Patients who had experienced great relief of their symptoms were not prepared to relapse when supplies ran out. They became totally dependent on the drug. Overdosage led to devastating side effects, and the ever escalating cost of maintaining their supplies resulted all too often in financial destitution. Such patients had no alternative but to seek relief by registering as guinea pigs to research groups such as the one at the Bellevue Hospital in New York which I joined in 1952.
Eventually, in 1954, under the joint aegis of the Nuffield Foundation and the Medical Research Council, a British trial was organised in six centres in which the benefits of cortisone were studied in 61 patients with rheumatoid arthritis in a crossover trial against aspirin. The published results startlingly concluded that there was no significant difference between the two groups (BMJ 1954;i:1223-7).
Philip Hench was deeply offended by these conclusions especially as they were signed by many colleagues whom he had numbered among his greatest friends. Indeed he was heard to refer to some of the signatories as traitors and he refused any further association with them.
I felt that the crossover nature of the trial and some of the methods of evaluation gave rise to an unrealistic conclusion and I imprudently wrote a letter (BMJ 1954;i: 1376). My letter drew an angry reply from Sir Austin Bradford-Hill, the distinguished medical statistician who had designed the trial protocol (BMJ 1954;i:1437). I met him many years later and he graciously agreed that some of my comments were justified in the light of subsequent events.
-- http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/317/7161/822/a

Looks like a good companion:

The Beginnings of Western Science

The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450

David C. Lindberg (Chicago 2008)

From the publisher:

When it was first published in 1992, The Beginnings of Western Science was lauded as the first successful attempt ever to present a unified account of both ancient and medieval science in a single volume. Chronicling the development of scientific ideas, practices, and institutions from pre-Socratic Greek philosophy to late-Medieval scholasticism, David C. Lindberg surveyed all the most important themes in the history of science, including developments in cosmology, astronomy, mechanics, optics, alchemy, natural history, and medicine. In addition, he offered an illuminating account of the transmission of Greek science to medieval Islam and subsequently to medieval Europe.

The Beginnings of Western Science was, and remains, a landmark in the history of science, shaping the way students and scholars understand these critically formative periods of scientific development. It reemerges here in a second edition that includes revisions on nearly every page, as well as several sections that have been completely rewritten. For example, the section on Islamic science has been thoroughly retooled to reveal the magnitude and sophistication of medieval Muslim scientific achievement. And the book now reflects a sharper awareness of the importance of Mesopotamian science for the development of Greek astronomy. In all, the second edition of The Beginnings of Western Science captures the current state of our understanding of more than two millennia of science and promises to continue to inspire both students and general readers.