Louis, Pierre Charles Alexandre (1787–1872)

French physician. By the introduction of his ‘numerical method’, Louis founded medical statistics and established medicine as an exact science. In Recherches anatomiques, pathologiques et thérapeutiques sur la maladie connue sous les noms de fièvre putride, etc. (1829), he both named the disease typhoid and established its pathology.

He was born in Ai, Champagne. He studied medicine at Reims and Paris, graduating at Paris in 1813. After a few years in Russia he returned to Paris and worked at the Charité for seven years, devoting all his time to the collection and analysis of facts, which became the basis for his subsequent research. His methods are also well illustrated in Recherches sur les effets de la saignée (1835). Recherches anatomico-pathologiques sur la phthisie (1825), is a valuable study of nearly 2,000 cases of tuberculosis.