Jean Liebault

Jean Liebault (1535 to 1596) was a French doctor and agronomist, born in Dijon. He married Nicole Estienne, who published several writings on marriage in which she condemned domestic violence and a large age difference between spouses, and his father in law was Charles Estienne, author of the Praedium rusticum. Liebault substantially altered and extended Estienne's book into a French text, La Maison Rustique, first translated into English by Richard Surflet as The Countrey Farme in 1600, with an expanded edition in 1616. He also translated or wrote the medical textbook Trois Livres appartenans aux infirmitez et maladies des femmes, on the illnesses of women, in which he recorded the first known description of the hot flashes of menopause in the medical literature. The sources the article draws on include the nineteenth century Biographie universelle and Antonio Saltini's history of the agrarian sciences, which treat his agronomic work.