ABSTRACT
The origins of epidemiology and demography are often traced to Graunt’s (1662) production of vital statistics through his “observations”? on the London Bills of Mortality and to Halley’s (1693) construction of a life table for the city of Breslau. The following century witnessed rapid developments in probability theory and mathematical statistics through the work of Legendre, Laplace, Bayes, Gauss, and many others. Medicine, however, as practiced well into the nineteenth century, remained largely in the dark ages, with heavy reliance on questionable theories and appeal to authority. There was little or no attempt to develop treatment plans, or to counsel preventive measures, on the basis of scientific data analysis.
