Louis-René Villermé
| Louis-René Villermé | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Louis-René Villermé by Louis-Léopold Boilly
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| Born |
10 March 1782 Paris, France |
| Died | 16 November 1863 (aged 81) Paris, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields | Medicine, Social epidemiology, Sociology, Hygienic reform |
Louis-René Villermé (10 March 1782 – 16 November 1863) was a French economist and physician. He was known for his early studies of social epidemiology, or the effects of socioeconomic status on health, in early industrial France, and was an advocate for hygienic reform in factories and prisons. He was described by Belgian polymath Adolphe Quetelet as "one of the men who has thrown most light upon this important subject." His work is considered pivotal in the history of the fields of sociology and statistical inquiry, and he is considered a founder of epidemiology.
Born in Paris on 10 March 1782, Villermé was a man of many occupations; he covered a wide range of professions in his lifetime including: medical student, army surgeon, author, social economist, and member of several medical boards. He studied with the anatomist Guillaume Dupuytren during 1801–1804. Villermé then spent 10 years serving in the army room during 1804–1814 under the reign of Napoleon. In the year 1819 Villermé married. After his military service, he began work as Secretary-General of the Société Médicale d'Emulation in 1818. Villermé was elected to the Académie royale de médecine in 1823.
Later in life, he became an economist who wrote about social issues. Villermé was one of the pioneering advocates of hygienic reform and one of the first in France to relate hygienic reform with that of social reform. He conducted numerous early studies on social epidemiology, the health disparities among classes in correlation with wages and living conditions, using his knowledge as a physician to incorporate data analysis as well as social investigations of the working class. He even conducted studies that related mortality rates with income.
Villermé was responsible for the establishment in 1829 of what may have been the first journal of urban studies, Annales d'hygiène publique et de médecine légale (Annals of Public Hygiene and Forensic Medicine, 1829). As one of its editors, he advocated for the use of statistics as a tool, and published the works of statisticians from France and other countries. In addition to being a member of the Académie royale de médecine, Villermé was a member of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques after it was reestablished in 1832. He was appointed by it to lead a commission into textile workers, and served as its president.
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