Adrien Proust

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Adrien Proust, portrait of Nadar .

Adrien Achille Proust , also Achille-Adrien Proust (born March 18, 1834 in Illiers near Chartres / Département Eure-et-Loir ; † November 26, 1903 in Paris ) was a French doctor who worked as an epidemiologist with the research of lung diseases, excelled in the European fight against cholera , the introduction of hygienic food controls and with a book on neurasthenia . He was the father of Marcel Proust and Robert Proust .

life and work

Proust went to high school in Chartres and then studied medicine in Paris. Shortly after his doctorate in 1862 with a thesis on pneumothorax , Proust became head of the Charité hospital in Paris in 1863 . After showing great personal commitment in the fight against cholera and campaigning for effective prevention, he traveled to Iran on behalf of the government in 1869 to research the pathways of the disease. In 1870 he was honored as commander of the Legion of Honor, in the same year he married Jeanne-Cléménce Weil, and in 1871 Marcel Proust was born. He became chief physician of the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris , a member of the Académie nationale de Médecine and was inspector general of the French health authorities from 1874 until his death. In 1885 he also became professor of hygiene at the Faculté de médecine de Paris .

Proust's involvement in several international health conferences led to the establishment of the Office International d'Hygiène Publique (OIHP) in Paris in 1907, a forerunner of the World Health Organization . Proust's concern was the establishment of a cordon sanitaire in the original meaning of the word, an epidemic protection belt for Europe. He campaigned for reliable quality seals for meat to be imported.

In 1897 he published with a co-author a book on L'hygiène du neurasthénique ("The treatment of the neurasthenic"), which became a standard work across Europe. Following the New Yorker George Miller Beard , who introduced the term neurasthenia (nerve weakness) in 1869 and quickly popularized it, Proust and Ballet rejected the idea that it was a physical, hereditary disease - a view that Beards believed Publications in France had once again gained ground, e.g. B. in the school of Jean-Martin Charcots . Although they gave some importance to the "neuropathic family" - in which the overprotective mother played an important role - they believed that the main cause of the disease was the stresses of modern life. It is "evenly distributed among civilized peoples, for whom the struggle for existence maintains a ceaseless and exaggerated exaltation of the functions of the nervous system." , but rather on the prevailing moral constraints, so that it can easily occur in people who only live for their social obligations. The patients stood out for a variety of symptoms that they passionately delved into. Proust and Ballet recommended that the doctor listen carefully to the descriptions of these symptoms and then make it clear to the patient that he had no physical illness and could therefore be completely cured. It is widely believed that Proust's portrayal of neurasthenia was very much inspired by his son Marcel.

Publications (selection)

Adrien Proust's list of publications includes 34 titles on various subject areas. He has researched and written about health care, disease prevention and various nervous and occupational diseases such as aphasia , paralysis, deficiency diseases, rabies and tuberculosis.

  • The different forms de ramollissement du cerveau . 1862
  • De l'aphasie . 1872
  • La defense de l'Europe versus le choléra . 1873
  • Essai sur l'hygiène internationale, ses applications contre la peste, la fièvre jaune et le choléra asiatique . Paris 1873
  • Traité d'hygiène publique et privée . Paris 1877
  • Le choléra . 1883
  • (with Gilbert Ballet): L'hygiène du neurasthenique , 1897. Engl. Transl. by PC Smith: The Treatment of Neurasthenia . New York 1903

literature

  • Robert Le Masle: Le professeur Adrien Proust (1834–1903) , Paris 1936
  • Daniel Panzac: Le docteur Adrien Proust: père méconnu, précurseur oublié , Paris 2003
  • Anson Rabinbach : Motor human. Strength, Fatigue and the Origins of Modernism , Vienna 2001, presents and discusses the neurasthenia book by Proust and Ballet on pp. 186–193.
  • Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Proust, Achille Adrien. In: Werner E. Gerabek u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of medical history. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1187.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ P. Zylberman: Making food safety an issue: internationalized food politics and French public health from the 1870s to the present. In: Medical history. Volume 48, Number 1, January 2004, pp. 1-28, PMID 14968643 , PMC 546293 (free full text).
  2. ↑ Cf. Anson Rabinbach: Motor Mensch. Strength, Fatigue and the Origins of Modernism , Vienna 2001, pp. 183–186.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Rabinbach, Motor Mensch , p. 187.
  4. ↑ Rabinbach, Motor Mensch , p. 187 refers to Bernard Straus: Maladies of Marcel Proust. Doctors and Disease in His Life and Work , New York 1980. Cf. also the linked text by Straus.
  5. ↑ George D. Painter : Marcel Proust. Vol. 1, 1962, p. 499.
personal data
SURNAME Proust, Adrien
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Proust, Achille-Adrien (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French doctor
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH Illiers near Chartres
DATE OF DEATH November 26, 1903
Place of death Paris