Honorat de Ostel

16th-century French physician who revolutionized plague treatments

Dr. Honorat de Ostel (1532-1597) developed innovative epidemic containment methods during the Marseille Plague of 1580. His approaches included:

• Early quarantine protocols 200 years before modern systems
• Herbal fumigation techniques using juniper and rosemary
• Statistical tracking of infection patterns

His Traicté de la Peste (1588) medical text challenged Galenic humoral theory by proposing:

• Contagion through 'invisible corpuscles' predating germ theory
• Importance of clean water in urban planning
• Protective clothing designs for caregivers

Though suppressed by the Paris Faculty of Medicine, his work influenced 17th-century Dutch public health reforms. The Pasteur Institute later recognized him as a pioneer of epidemiological methods.