Ne prête-t-on qu’aux riches? Guillaume Le Roy et la littérature médicale en français

This study is devoted to the medical treatises printed by Guillaume Le Roy, the first difficulty being to determine which texts fall into this category. It is in terms of reception that Le Roy’s catalogue must be understood, the audience targeted by the texts – doctors, practitioners, any individual concerned with treating themselves or staying in good health – being the most relevant criterion for establishing the list of texts finally retained. There are four texts, all in French: Traité des eaux artificielles, Regime de l’epidemie, Lapidaire du roi Philippe, Le Proprietaire des choses (translation by Jean Corbechon of De Proprietatibus rerum by Barthélemy l’Anglais). The harvest, though not very fruitful, is nonetheless full of lessons, both about Le Roy’s taste for works with a more practical purpose – since most of these were books for use in everyday life and intended to be useful to as many people as possible – and about the methods of a printer anxious to distribute a text faithful to the prototype he had at his disposal, whatever the quality of the model he did not seem to be trying to amend

Everyday life · Quality (philosophy) · Taste · Historical and Literary Analyses · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History of Medicine Studies