[Grmek, medical history, and paleopathology].

Mirko Drazen Grmek died on 6 March 2000, defeated by an implacable enemy (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which had been diagnosed just 18 months earlier). He has now found peace in his final resting place, the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris. His immense body of work reveals an omniscient man of great wisdom, a cosmopolitan polyglot who devoted his life to the history of science, with particular emphasis on medicine and disease. He looked at paleopathology for what that discipline could bring to the study of populations in antiquity, and succeeded in anchoring it in history with his definitive concept of "pathocenose", created in 1969. Several years later, his most important work, "Les Maladies à l'aube de la civilisation occidentale", (1983) set forth with definitive and convincing illustrations the importance of paleopathology, which will therefore be forever associated with one of the most outstanding medical history books of the XXth. century.