In the history of medicine, Gaston Durville is one of the names that keeps returning.
The record lists Gaston Durville as French physician and naturism advocate.
Gaston Durville was born at 3rd arrondissement of Paris in 1887. His recorded nationality is France.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, laboratory medicine, vaccines and public health began to change mortality at population scale.
The test of medical work is whether practice changed, not whether the argument was elegant.
That the work was done from France matters: hospitals, training and research funding are unevenly distributed, and they decide which questions can be asked.
Gaston Durville died in 1971, aged 84. What survives is the change in practice, which is how a medical life is actually measured.
