Louis Lépecq de La Clôture
Louis Lépecq de La Clôture (12 July 1736 – 5 November 1804) was a French surgeon and epidemiologist. His work consisted mainly of a 15-year observation of the relations between climate, geography and pathologies in Normandy. Biography Son of Louis Lépecq de La Clôture (1706–1742), doctor-regent and professor of surgery at the Faculty of Medicine in Caen and Madeleine Pyron, he was born in Caen in Calvados. He began his medical studies in Caen where, in 1755, he obtained his medical degree. After a stay in Paris where he worked at the Hôpital de la Charité, notably under the direction of Théophile de Bordeu who taught him to "replace words with facts" he returned to Caen (1763) as an agrégé at the Faculty and Professor of Surgery. In 1769, he went to Rouen, where he was agrégé at the College of Physicians then appointed doctor of the Hôtel-Dieu de Rouen, then doctor of the Prisons and doctor of the Généralité for epidemic diseases. He married Marie Claude Lebon there in 1780. He quickly abandoned surgery to devote himself to medicine and especially epidemiology. He began criss-crossing Normandy to gather observations on the relationship between diseases and the environment. He first