John C. Sinclair and Michael B. Bracken; eds. 650 pages. New York: Oxford University Press; 1992. $150.00.

This major new text is, obviously, not directly relevant to the practice of internal medicine, but it merits the attention of anyone in any clinical field concerned with the nature of evidence for or against particular treatments and how that evidence should be helpfully presented in synoptic form for practitioners. For this consideration the notable features are the opening chapter by Sinclair on relevancies and methods in assessing treatments and preventions (with special attention to meta-analysis) and the excellent tabular summaries of relevant trials giving author names, date of publication, outcome measures, and confidence intervals. For each intervention considered, the text summarizes the implications for practice and for future research. The cognoscenti will recognize this text as a companion to Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth, that monument to the pioneering work of Iain Chalmers and his associates at the British National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, Oxford, England.