author
William Black
1749–1829
An Irish physician in London, he wrote some of the earliest English-language studies of disease, mortality, and public health. His books ranged from medical history to statistical observations, showing an unusual drive to measure how illness affected society.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Ireland in 1749, he studied medicine at the University of Leiden and earned his M.D. in 1772. He later practiced in London and became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1787.
He is remembered as a physician-writer who helped bring numbers into medical thinking. In the 1780s he published works comparing patterns of disease and mortality, and he has been described as one of the first English-speaking physicians to print this kind of medical statistics.
His writing was wide-ranging rather than narrow. Alongside his statistical work, he also published on the history of medicine and surgery, reflecting a curiosity about both how medicine worked in his own day and how it had developed over time.