Popular Errors

"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, medica-ments, and pathological terms makes the work accessible to readers in many fields."

—Medical Book News

"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 translationof 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