Apprenticed at the age of sixteen to a surgeon, he soon went to Paris, studied medicine and surgery there, and, having qualified as a master-surgeon, settled down to practice at Mantes.
In 1737 he was appointed perpetual secretary of the academy of surgery founded by François Gigot de la Peyronie, and became surgeon in ordinary to King Louis XV.
When he ennobled him he gave him for arms three flowers of the pansy[4] (derived from pensée, in French meaning thought), with the Latin motto Propter cogitationem mentis.
Around 1750 he became acquainted with Jacques C. M. V. de Gournay (1712–1759), who was also an earnest inquirer in the economic field; and round these two distinguished men was gradually formed the philosophic sect of the Économistes, or, as for distinction's sake they were afterwards called, the Physiocrates.
Adam Smith, during his stay on the continent with the young Duke of Buccleuch in 1764–1766, spent some time in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Quesnay and some of his followers; he paid a high tribute to their scientific services in his Wealth of Nations.
He died on 16 December 1774, having lived long enough to see his great pupil, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, in office as minister of finance.
[4] The Tableau économique, though on account of its dryness and abstract form it met with little general favor, may be considered the principal manifesto of the school.
It was regarded by the followers of Quesnay as entitled to a place amongst the foremost products of human wisdom, and is named by the elder Mirabeau, in a passage quoted by Adam Smith,[6] as one of the three great inventions which have contributed most to the stability of political societies, the other two being those of writing and of money.
A small edition de luxe of this work, with other pieces, was printed in 1758 in the Palace of Versailles under the king's immediate supervision, some of the sheets, it is said, having been pulled by the royal hand.
Already in 1767 the book had disappeared from circulation, and no copy of it is now procurable; but, the substance of it has been preserved in the Ami des hommes of Mirabeau, and the Physiocratie of Dupont de Nemours.
Gregory Blue writes that Quesnay "praised China as a constitutional despotism and openly advocated the adoption of Chinese institutions, including a standardized system of taxation and universal education."