Jean Canappe
Jean Canappe (sometimes written Jean Canape) (1495- after 1558) was a French physician who was attached to Francis I of France in 1542. He sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Philiatros and was known because he contributed to the transmission of medical and surgical knowledge in French with Pierre Tolet. Biography. Jean Canappe was born in 1495. He was principal at the Collège de la Trinité in Lyon from 1528 to 1530 and obtained his medical degree at the University of Montpellier in 1530 in one of the two classes which constituted the "cercle des anticques amys" of Rabelais : Nostradamus, Pierre Tolet, Jacobus Sylvius and Guillaume Rondelet for 1529 and Jean Canappe, Charles des Marais and Antoine Champier for 1530. He worked with Symphorien Champier at the College of Medicine in Lyon and became a friend of Ambroise Paré for whom he translated several books by Galen. Public reader of the surgeons-barbers in Lyon in 1538 he was the abbreviator" of Guy de Chauliac himself considered as the father of medical surgery, a profession then reserved to barbers. Works. Canappe undertook to give lessons in surgery in French and to translate into French anatomical and medical books in  Latin and Greek because surgery was not taught in French at that time. In this way he provided written and oral instructions to the barbers of his time, who also practised surgery. These men, who had not received a brilliant education, could not draw surgical knowledge from works written in Latin and there were few surgical books in French at the time. Latin remained the language of knowledge, but translations of the great ancient authors (Galen, Hippocrates) then appeared to accompany the development of medical knowledge and the publication of works. Against some doctors who thought that the translation of  ancient Latin works into French would distort medicine, these humanist doctors argued that translation into the vernacular would, on the contrary, allow new progress in health and public health: barber-surgeons could add to their manual skills, an ancient surgical knowledge confronted with their actual practice. Canape increased the number of translated books and thus helped to train surgeons. Ambroise Paré was one of them. Canappe translated several of Galen's books from Greek into French, such as: as well as Latin medical books in French: He also wrote: Jean Canappe's disciple was Pierre Tolet who was also linked  with Rabelais. In January 1539, Étienne Dolet wrote him the following letter: