In the history of medicine, Guillaume de Baillou is one of the names that keeps returning.
The record lists Guillaume de Baillou as French physician and founder of modern epidemiology.
Guillaume de Baillou was born at Paris in 1538. His recorded nationality is France.
Dissection returned in this period and overturned inherited anatomy, which had been copied without checking for centuries.
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.
Guillaume de Baillou died in 1616, aged 78. What survives is the change in practice, which is how a medical life is actually measured.
