ABSTRACT
Why and how Henri de Rothschild became a physician was duly recorded by the doctor himself in his later years.2 Since his father (James Edouard) had ended up in the bank in spite of beginning a brilliant legal career, Henri was able to claim that he was the first in his family to break with the family’s occupational tradition. The origin of his interest in medicine was a family affair. James Edouard associated with the great doctors of the day who came to see his sick father, Nathaniel: Charles Richet, Apollinaire Bouchard, Alfred Fournier, and Charcot, a doctor detested by Fournier. In 1867 his father’s interest in the increasing interaction between the law and medicine led him to participate in the founding of the Société française de médecine légale. Since Henri was only nine years old when his father died in 1881, much of the influence probably came from the stories told to him by family and friends.
