Louis Duret

Louis Duret(1527 – 22 January 1586) was a French physician toCharles IX of Franceand his brotherHenry III of Franceas their chief physician.

Early life

Duret was born inBâgé-la-Villein the French province ofBresse(which then belonged to theDuke of Savoy) in the year 1527.He came from a minorFrench nobilityfamily. Leaving his father's home as a teenager. he made little money and subsisted at thepoverty level.Around age nineteen, Duret decided to go to Paris to seek a good career. At first he was trained in academic disciplines by a private tutor, French magistrate Achilles Harlay, who took him under his wing because he demonstrated talent in many academic fields, especially the languages ofLatin,Greek,andArabic,which were integral to medicine. Duret had aphotographic memoryand knew all the works ofHippocratesby heart.

Adult

Duret studied medicine under the training ofJacques HoullierandJacques Dubois.He studied the medicine field with much vigor with his skills of the languages he knew, which proved helpful in his new career of medicine. He soon occupied a position at theCollège de France.His excellent reputation spread rapidly. He became a professor and ultimately taught at this college, a position he held for eighteen years (1568–1586).

Philosophically, he was firmly attached toHippocratesand theHippocratic oath,with roots in ancient medical practice.So esteemed was he that Henry III granted him a pension of "four hundredcrowns of gold."

Family genealogy

Duret's father was Jean Duret. He had a son, Charles Duret, that was superintendent of finance. He also had another son, Jean Duret (1563–1629), who was physician toQueen Marie de Medici.When Duret's daughter Catherine Arnoult de Lisle married in 1586, King Henry III attended the wedding and gave her a lucrative financial endowment, honoring Duret's services as a medical doctor.

Surname

Sometimes in Old French the source says the spelling of his surname is "Duket".

Death

Duret died in Paris on 22 January 1586.

Works

• Adversaria, enarrationes et scholia in Jac. Hollerii opera practica, et scholia in ejusdem librum de morbis internis,Paris, 1571.

Legacy

His most famous work is the unpublished commentary onHippocratesin 1588.

• Hippocratis magni Coacæ prœnotiones; opus admirabile in tres libros distributum, interprete et enarratore L. Dureto Segusiano.

His son Jean Duret finished the work and published it in 1631 as:

• In magni Hippocratis librum de humoribus purgandis et in libros tres diæta acutorum, L. Dureti Segisiani commentarii interpretatione et enarratione insignes,Paris, J. Jost, 1631 (comments dictated in 1565 – 1566).

Bibliography

• Chalmers, Alexander(1813).Louis Duret (1527–1629).Vol. 12. London: Nichols, Son & Bentley. pp. 517–518.ISBN9780404014902.{{cite book}}:|work=ignored (help)atGoogle books.
• Michaud, Louis Gabriel; Michaud, Joseph Fr. (1814).Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne.Retrieved14 June2013.
• Thomas, Joseph (1 January 2010).The Universal Dictionary of Biography and Mythology, Clu-hys.Cosimo, Inc.ISBN978-1-61640-071-2.Retrieved14 June2013.