Historical Background

Original Title

‘The art of physick made plain & easie; by the learned D. Fambresarius, physician to the most Christian King, Lewis XIV. Translated out of his famous book, De schola medecin. By J.P. gent. Published for the publick benefit.’

Publication

1684 the King’s Arms in the Poultry, London

Printer: Henry Clark

Publisher: Dorman Newman

Who was D. Fambresarius?

D. Fambresarius a.k.a. Nicolas Abraham de La Framboisière was the physician and one of the advisors to King Lewis XIV by 1600. He became a professor at the College Royal and a doyen of the Faculty of Medicine at Reims University later. As well as, becoming Chief Medical Officer in 1610 for his devotion to military medicine. He also had an interest in philosophy, which he studied, logic, dialectics, and ethics.

He was born in 1560 in Guise, France and died in 1636 in Reims, France. In his time Paracelsian medicine was attempting to uproot the Galenic / Humoral approach to medicine and he advocated for a conservative approach to Paracelsian medicine rooted within the Galenic tradition.

Like all medical doctors at the time he wrote mainly in Latin until 1587, after which he started writing in French and eventually allowed some of his works were printed into English after his death. Interestingly, the tract ‘The art of physick made plain & easie‘ is published also after the death of Nicolas Culpeper who worked diligently to de-latinize medical texts for the common people in England.

Works

Methodicæ institutiones Philosophiæ rationalis, naturalis, moralis
De schola medecin
An easy method to know the causes and signs of the humour most ruleth in…
The art of physick made plain & easie