RENAUDOT, THEOPHRASTE French physician and philanthropist, was born at Loudun (Vienne), and studied surgery in Paris. He was only nineteen when he received, by favour apparently, the degree of doctor at Montpellier. After some time spent in travel he began to practise in his native town. In 161 2 he was summoned to Paris by Richelieu, received the titles of physician and councillor to the king, and was desired to or ganize a scheme of public assistance. Many difficulties were put in his way, however, and he returned until 1624 to Poitou, where Richelieu made him "commissary general of the poor." But in 163o he opened an information bureau in Paris at the sign of the Grand Coq near the Pont Saint-Michel. This bureau d'adresse was labour bureau, intelligence department, exchange and charity organization in one ; and the sick were directed to doctors prepared to give them free treatment. Presently he estab lished a free dispensary in the teeth of the opposition of the fac ulty in Paris. The Paris faculty refused to accept the new medica ments proposed by the heretic from Montpellier, restricting them selves to the old prescriptions of blood-letting and purgation.
Under the protection of Richelieu Renaudot started the first French newspaper, the Gazette (1631), which appeared weekly; he also edited the Mercure francais. In 1637 he opened in Paris the first Mont de Piete, an institution of which he had seen the advantages in Italy. In 1640 the medical faculty, headed by Guy Patin, started a campaign against the innovator of the Grand Coq. After the death of Richelieu and of Louis XIII. the parle ment of Paris ordered him to return the letters patent for the establishment of his bureau and his Mont de Pike, and refused to allow him to practise medicine in Paris. The Gazette remained, and in 1646 Renaudot was appointed by Mazarin historiographer to the king. He died on Oct. 25, 1653.
See E. Hatin, Theophraste Renaudot (Poitiers, 1883), and La Maison du Coq (Paris, 1885) ; Michel Emery, Renaudot et l'introduction de la medication chimique (Paris, 1889) ; and G. Bonnefont, Un Oublie, Theophraste Renaudot (Limoges, n.d.).