[1] As Dean of the Faculty of Lyon, he introduced a French-language teaching programme[3] with daily visits by students to the hospital and created a single training course for physicians, barbers surgeons and apothecaries.
A friend of Rabelais,[4] he was also a leading figure in Lyon's cultural life and a member of a cenacle of scholars (Barthélemy Aneau, Maurice Scève,...) who were working to promote new reflections on poetic language.
He is quoted in the third book of Pantagruel, chapter 34: “Je ne vous avois oncques puys veu que jouastez à. Monspellier avecques nos antiques amys Ant.
Saporta, Guy Bouguier, Balthasar Noyer, Tollet, Jan Quentin, François Robinet, Jan Perdrier et François Rabelais, la morale comoedie de celluy qui avoit espousé une femme mute.”He died of plague around 1580.
[11] 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.