Marcel Proust (1871–1922): a historico-medical review of his fatal asthma

Abstract

Section snippets

The historico-medical context

Marcel Proust's medical conditions have been widely studied, with detailed reconstruction of the history of his illness and the influence it had on his artistic production. Proust had recurrent attacks of severe asthma from the age of 9 years, later developing an obstructive lung disease, before dying of infectious pneumonia at the age of 51 years.Marcel Proust grew up in a family of doctors and had the availability of personal acquaintances and medical texts from which to draw information: his

Asthma, meditatio mortis

One of the most accurate descriptions of asthma by today's standards was that of John Floyer (1649–1734), a physician and polyhistor, himself suffering from asthma, who had defined the disease, separating it from other pulmonary disorders and recognising its hereditary nature. He identified the cause of dyspnoea in bronchial constriction, due to spasm, considering tonic spasm more like catalepsy than the clonic convulsion of epilepsy. According to Floyer, periodic asthma, understood as

Marcel Proust's disease

Proust had suffered his first asthma attack at the age of 9 years. Subsequently, his asthma had worsened, and he had been visited by numerous doctors. However, the only doctor who took care of Proust during the last 20 years of his life was Maurice Bize, a family doctor who visited him faithfully every Friday from 1904 onwards until his death.Proust's asthma was probably a common and severe form of bronchial asthma associated with allergies and hay fever. The non-respiratory manifestations

Neurologists at Proust's bedside

As asthma was considered a nervous disease, it is not surprising that the most famous doctors consulted by Proust were neurologists or neuropsychiatrists. Proust consulted Joseph Babinski (1857–1932) for the first time in the spring of 1918, when he thought he needed to undergo brain surgery because he feared he would develop facial paralysis. In 1904, Proust turned to Dr Jules Dejerine (1849–1917), Charcot's second successor at the Clinique des Maladies du Systèmes Nerveux at La Salpétrière.

Conclusions

Proust's illnesses influenced his work, so much so that some scholars have suggested that there is a very close correlation between his creative genius and the ailments he suffered from, particularly insomnia and asthma.Proust suffered from asthma throughout his life, but the list of his other symptoms is extensive: neurasthenia, anxiety, palpitations, headaches, stomach upsets, hay fever, insomnia, slurred speech, dizziness, temperature dysregulation, and arthritis. The use of fumigations with