[Bodies and souls of Maxence van der Meersch. The gaze of a writer on medicine in France on the eve of the Second World War].
Maxence Van der Meersch, got the Prix Goncourt in 1937. He was an important writer between the two world wars, by his inspiration and his realism he was related to the naturalism school. His works reflect his life, from 1937, after having discovered the christian faith, he devoted his live to it and militated through his writing for his convictions. "Corps et âmes", published in 1943 is a painting of the medicine in France at the end of the thirties. When he was published the book raised up a sharp polemic, badly accepted by medical world because of its realism without concession, on another hand it was welcome by general public and litterary critics. In an university town the author stages physicians, students, nurses, administrators, politicians and many other characters to paint a vast fresco of medical world and society, during this time. In whole he gives a greater share to mental pathology with the advent of new therapeutics and to tuberculosis wich had a great medico-social importance. Taking a fancy for doctor Carton's neo hippocratics theories, he fully bound himself in his book to broadcast that he thinks to be a new medical truth and then was led to contest scientific medicine which had, for him, lost his humanity. Suffering of lung tuberculosis, holding fast to his convictions he rejected any therapeutics except his diets and died January the 13th 1951. Beside his spiritual and bound features, "Corps et âmes" the quality of documentation and the accuracy of descriptions remains a testimony about physicians and medicine at second world war eve.
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D005602:France; D049673:History, 20th Century; D008091:Literature / Q000266:history*; D008511:Medicine; D011639:Public Opinion; D014857:Warfare
Corps et âmes de Maxence Van der Meersch. Le regard d'un écrivain sur la médecine en France à la veille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.