"The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation?" (1965), by Austin Bradford Hill

In 1965, Austin Bradford Hill published the article “The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation?” in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine. In the article, Hill describes nine criteria to determine if an environmental factor, especially a condition or hazard in a work environment, causes an illness. The article arose from an inaugural presidential address Hill gave at the 1965 meeting of the Section of Occupational Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine in London, England. The criteria he established in the article became known as the Bradford Hill criteria and the medical community refers to them when determining whether an environmental condition causes an illness. The criteria outlined in “The Environment and Disease: Association or Causation?” help identify the causes of many diseases, including cancers of the reproductive system.