François Bossier de Lacroix (Sauvages) (1706-1777) founded medical classification. His systematic work Nosologia methodica superseded Linnaeus' medical classification.

William Farr (1807-1883) proposed a classification of causes of death which was modified and adopted by the International Statistical Congress in 1855.

Jacques Bertillon (1851-1922) chaired a committee which developed the Bertillon classification of causes of death using Farr's principle of classifying diseases by site. It was adopted in 1893 and further revised in 1900, 1910 and 1920 as the International list of causes of death.² From 1900, classifications of diseases for morbidity reporting purposes were integrated into the causes of death classification.

World Health Organization (WHO) The manual of the international classification of diseases (ICD), injuries and causes of death was adopted internationally in 1948 by the First World Health Assembly. This was the sixth revision of the original classification. The 10th revision, the International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems (ICD-10), was adopted in 1993.