Daubenton taught and strongly influenced him. He was a family friend of Fourcroy’s, and encouraged him to study medicine (they became fellow-students). Blumenbach was an important collaborator — they effectively invented comparative anatomy as a systematic science. D’Alembert gave him an Italian work about public health; he got it published in French, and helped change public opinion about the unhealthiness of burial-grounds. Turgot, Condorcet and Lavoisier were all friends; brought in by Turgot, his radical approach to epidemic cattle-plague (not to mention his pioneering of epidemiology) is what really made his name.