Drawing of a bust of Guy de La
Brosse
Guy de La Brosse (1586 – 1641 in Paris
), was a
French botanist, doctor, and pharmacist. A physician to
King Louis XIII of France, he
is also notable for the creation of a major botanical garden of
medicinal herbs, which was commissioned by
the king.
This garden, the Jardin des
Plantes
(originally Jardin du Roi) was the
first botanical garden in Paris.
Biography
Guy de La
Brosse, doctor to Louis XIII, obtained royal permission on the 6th
July 1626 to found, in Paris, a herb garden
destined to culture plants useful to medicine to replace those of Montpellier
created by Henri IV.
But this project took some time to come to fruition since the
Faculty of Medicine in Paris considered the garden as competition
to their activities, because La Brosse wished to teach
botany and
chemistry
there.
This garden, called "
Jardin du roi" (Garden of the King),
would not be officially inaugurated until
1640,
more than 5 years after its actual creation. To calm the university
faculty, the king only authorised one teacher without diploma at
the garden, with this choice being left to the garden
supervisor.
In
1628 La Brosse published "
Dessin du
Jardin Royal pour la culture des plantes médicinales" ("Design
of the Royal Garden for the culture of medical plants"). It was
published again with five supplementary woodcuts in
1640. It contained the nature, virtue and use of the
medical plants, a catalogue of the plants currently being
cultivated and a plan of the garden. In
1631 he
published "
Avis pour le Jardin royal des plantes" ("Advice
for the Royal Garden"). La Brosse had also planned the publication
of a "Collection of planters of the Jardin du Roi" accompanied by
four hundred copper plates attributed to
Abraham Bosse (1602-1676), but his death
prevented La Brosse from achieving this. The heirs of Guy de La
Brosse sold the copper plates to a boiler-maker for the weight of
the metal. Guy-Crescent Fagon (1638-1718), successor to de La
Brosse in the post of Supervisor of the Jardin du Roi, could, after
much effort, only locate fifty of them. Eventually
Sebastien Vaillant (1669-1722) and
Antoine de Jussieu (1686-1758)
supplied a collection of 24 specimens.
The Jardin du Roi is now known as the
Jardin des Plantes
(Garden of Plants).
Sources
http://galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/labrosse.html
External Link