L'Ennemi de la Mort, the fight against the fevers'realm.

Abstract

The plot of the Ennemi de la Mort, published in 1908, one year after the death of the author Eugne Le Roy, is briefly presented: in 1820, the young practitioner Daniel Charbonniere, who is of Huguenot origin, comes home to the French "Double"-region in Dordogne. For a while, he is enticed by his cousin Minna de Lege, having saved her life. But, as Charbonniere thinks that their inequality of wealth is a barrier, he disregards her desire, which leads the very devout cousin to marry the nephew of her spiritual adviser. Daniel Charbonniere shows himself a disinterested physician, dedicated to the ill peasants suffering from malaria caused by the waters of the Double marshes. He aims to obtain the dry draining of these pools., With the help of a mayor and a priest, the physician also distributes inoculation against poxes and, otherwise, saves the life of a young lady, who later on becomes his companion. Confronted with charlatanry and the hostility of the landlords owning the pools, Daniel Charbonniere is beaten up by the peasants. Dispossessed by his very embittered cousin Minna, the physician goes to live with his wife and children in a decrepit sheep shelter. The persecutions go on and the peasants, instigated by the clergymen, murder Daniel's wet nurse and profane his ancestor's tombs. He ends his life in loneliness. The character of the physician is then analyzed more thoroughly ; under the aspect of his convictions and his humanistic engagement, in the name of which he doesn't accept any accommodation with a wealth-driven society, Charbonniere appears as a freethinker and a very indulgent practitioner, a scientist and a wholehearted mind shaped by the Enlightenment's spirit. In appendix to this analysis follows the rapid description of a litigation, which occurred in 1862 in the village of Les Riceys (Aube district), about a pool, of which Dr. Gabiot, the physician in charge of the epidemics, struggled to obtain the dry draining, in order to eradicate typhoid fever and dysentery. This practitioner stumbled upon the local public authorities, and, despite the support of the prefect, lost his fight.