Duret was born in Bâgé-la-Ville in the French province of Bresse (which then belonged to the Duke of Savoy) in the year 1527. He came from a minor French nobility family. Leaving his father's home as a teenager. he made little money and subsisted at the poverty level. Around age nineteen, Duret decided to go to Paris to seek a good career. At first he was trained in academic disciplines by a private tutor, French magistrate Achilles Harlay, who took him under his wing because he demonstrated talent in many academic fields, especially the languages of Latin, Greek, and Arabic, which were integral to medicine. Duret had a photographic memory and knew all the works of Hippocrates by heart.
