It is notable as one of the earliest known French transi, and the first to be sculpted in the round (ie fully three dimensional as opposed to carved on coffin lid or stone slab).

He became court physician to Charles V of France, and gained fame after an apparently successful operation on the King's skull after the monarch had suffered a nervous breakdown.

Having expanded his knowledge, he returned to his homeland, Picardy, where, in the course of the plague epidemics of the Black Death, he gained a reputation as one of the best doctors in France.

When king Charles VI of France suffered a nervous breakdown (possibly a schizophrenic episode) in August 1392 near Le Mans, during a campaign against Brittany, unexpectedly attacked his own companions, killing some of them and falling into a coma himself, he was already abandoned by his doctors.

[5][6] Just before his death, Harsigny made a large donation to the church of the Cordeliers in Laon where he wished to be buried, and commissioned his transi tomb.

[6] His momument was in the graveyard of the Cordeliers until the building was demolished during the French Revolution, after which his body and tomb were placed in the nave of Laon Cathedral.