- a product of the 18th century driven by death?
François Bossier de Lacroix (1706-1777*), better known as Sauvages, is credited with the first attempt to classify diseases systematically.
Sauvages' comprehensive treatise was published under the title Nosologia methodica.
A contemporary of Sauvages was the great methodologist Linnaeus (1707-1778), one of whose treatises was entitled Genera morborum.
Beginning of the 19th century, the classification of disease in most general use was one by William Cullen (1710-1790), of Edinburgh, published in 1785 under the title Synopsis nosologiae methodicae.
My source:
http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/HistoryOfICD.pdf
* I note sources that record Sauvage's year of death as 1767.
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rhs_0048-7996_1969_num_22_4_2601