DUBOIS, Jacques.

First edition in French translation of this popular pharmacopoeia by the extremely prolific physician Jacques Dubois, known as Jacobus Sylvius, first published 1548. It opens with several prefaces, one of which advocates communication between doctors and apothecaries. The work is simply divided into three methods: choosing simples from flowers, seeds, roots, trees, etc., cooking them in various ways, frying, roasting, etc., and then combining them to make drugs in the form of oils, powders, pills and so on. The translator, Andr é Caille, who translated other pharmacopoeias as well as a work on gardens, provides a marginal commentary, mostly pointing to references in Galen and Dioscorides, but occasionally yielding criticism, such as the claim that the author has neither seen nor understood the fashion of harvesting grapes, which is completely contrary to what he describes (p. 72). Dubois was one of Vesalius s teachers and led attacks on him after the publication of the Human Anatomy, for daring to question Galen s authority.