ABSTRACT
The Journal 1887-1910 of Jules Renard (1864-1910), creator of the immortal Poil de Carotte, has long titillated the literary mind; it can also enlighten the historian of medicine, as Jacques Léonard showed in an essay analyzing what the journal tells us about French personal hygiene and even the beliefs and practices of doctors.2 Some other perceptive historians like Roy Porter have enjoyed mining literary classics to illustrate the tributaries of medical history. Henri de Rothschild’s literary output has not achieved the status of Jules Romains’ Knock ou le triomphe de la médecine (1923) or even Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906), though some of his plays achieved a certain notoriety in their day and certainly an analysis of his “medical plays” is not without interest and significance in the historical development of twentieth-century medicine.
