That the Best Physician Is Also an Architect: Medicine and Practice in the Life and Works of Louis Savot (ca. 1579–1640)

Abstract

Historians have long regarded Louis Savot as a physician who, having given up medical practice, became a dilettante polymath and published L’architecture françoise des bastimens particuliers (1624), a manual for builders and a reference book. Yet these scholars never question the practical sources of L’architecture or the actual circumstances of its author’s life. In That the Best Physician Is Also an Architect: Medicine and Practice in the Life and Works of Louis Savot (ca. 1579–1640), Georges Farhat addresses such inconsistencies by exploring how, instead, Savot’s education and permanent practice of medicine intersected with his pursuits in other technical fields. To better understand Savot’s notion of architectural practice, Farhat reconstructs the overlooked network of events, patron-patients, and institutions that, along with design projects and professional encounters, shaped the physician’s publication. This close study of L’architecture reveals how Savot’s approach to the art of building was critically informed by Galenic medicine.