[Medicine and physicians in the works of Georges Simenon].
When reading the novels of Georges Simenon, one is surprised by the high prevalence of doctors in medicine, general practitioners, specialists or university professors. With a few remarkable exceptions, most of these figures appear under a most positive angle: serenity, seriousness, devotion, scientific knowledge, social and professional success. We suggest that the origin of this phenomenon must be searched in the life of the novelist himself. Indeed, the young Simenon has been in contact with a major city hospital, the "Hôpital de Bavière" in Liège, where he was serving the early morning mass and was accompanying the priest to the dying, and with students in Medicine renting accommodation at his parents' house. Simenon had looked to study medicine and had to change his plans being told at the age of 15 that his father, suffering angina pectoris, would not survive more than 2-3 years. The prognosis was correct and this greatly impressed Simenon. At the age of 40, the novelist was given for himself the same diagnosis and prognosis, obviously erroneous this time... This event led him to write his first autobiographical work "Pedigree". All his life long, Simenon has had a major interest for Medicine, entertaining a significant personal collection of medical books and journals and having personal contacts with many physicians, some of them illustrious. We believe that all this has had a significant impact on the topics and the characters of his novels.
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Département de Médecine. Centre hospitalier universitaire du Sart-Tilman, Liège.
D005602:France; D049673:History, 20th Century; D008093:Literature, Modern; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D010820:Physicians
La médecine et les médecins dans l'oeuvre de Georges Simenon.