Du Laurens was born into a medical family at Arles, and studied at Avignon and Paris, before taking his medical degree at Montpellier, where in 1582 he succeeded Laurent Joubert as Professor. Later he was appointed Chancellor of the university. He also served at the court of Henry IV as physician in ordinary, and became first physician to Marie de Medici. Volume 1 of the present work, Historia anatomica humani corporis, is an expanded version of Opera anatomica, first published in 1593. It is illustrated with thirty-six plates borrowed from Vesalius, Coiter, Valverde, and others. One of the most widely used anatomical textbooks of the first half of the seventeenth century, it contains little original material, while the illustrations did not improve on their predecessors. Of the few original observations are the skeletons of a child at various ages (p. 165), and the 'cauda equina' - a term he coined - drawn like a horse's tail (p. 179). Du Laurens also gave a good description of scrofula, and was a firm believer in the 'king's touch'. The later Frankfurt editions of his works were published by an Englishman, William Fitzer, who had taken over the stock and publishing business of Johann Theodor de Bry (d. 1626). Fitzer is best remembered as the publisher of Harvey's De motu cordis (1628).
