ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes representations of medical practitioners in fiction, encompassing classic and contemporary literature. Albert Camus was a French existentialist novelist and essayist. An acknowledged master of French prose, he embodied the conscience of his times. Camus was 35 when he wrote The Plague in 1947. It was acclaimed as one of the greatest novels of the post-World War II period. It is the story of an outbreak of bubonic plague that takes place in 1940 in the Algerian port of Oran while Algeria was still part of France. The epidemic begins with the emergence of thousands of dying rats on the streets of the city and then spreads to the human population. Dr. Bernard Rieux isolated the sick, incised the buboes and waited for the anti-plague serum to arrive, though it turned out not to be very helpful when finally available. Rieux is a lone human being who emerges from a nightmarish experience with a clearer vision of humanity.
