[Pierre Rayer and the foundation in 1858 of the AGMF: an underrated social-political event]

The founding by Rayer in 1858 of the Association Générale des Médecins de France (AGMF), which gathered academic, hospital, and rural or urban doctors, was an act of professional solidarity. This action had a major social and political impact, making obsolete the Le Chapelier law of 1791, which limited to local communities the activity of provident societies. The AGMF also fought against illegal medical acts and for the dignity of medical care. It organized social health care, free for the poor and negotiated for local mutualists, helped establish relations between health care and government, and prepared the 1868 law on industrial injuries. Rayer financed the AGMF from the beginning, and devoted himself to it as a renowned clinician fully aware of the medical applications of science and as the founding President of the Société de Biologie and of Napoléon III's private physician, who fully supported the AGMF.