Popular Errors

Historians of medicine and social historians will welcome the translation and republication of a popular and important 16th-century French medical treatise on pregnancy, conception, sexual practices, infertility, childbirth, lying-in, and breast-feeding. Despite its popularity, as evidenced in its 19 editions, including Latin and Italian translations, Joubert's Erreurs Populaires has received little attention from modern historians. This edition now places the work within the easy reach of those who formerly had to look at it in rare-book libraries. - Journal of the History of Medicine Orthodox medicine in pre-modern times seems to have had all too little to offer other than a bedside manner and thumping doses of purgatives. The point emerges clearly from Gregory de Rocher's translation of Laurent Joubert's Popular Errors, of 1578, a 'frantic effort,' writes de Rocher, 'at parrying the fierce blows to the power and prestige of physicians dealt by practical medicine.' - London Review of Books Joubert's criticism is grounded in... opposition to such practitioners of empirical knowledge as barber-surgeons, apothecaries, midwives, and laymen who were would-be physicians or charlatans.... A complete index of proper names, medicaments, and pathological terms makes the work accessible to readers in many fields. - Medical Book News