The Enlightened Physician: Achille-Cléophas Flaubert, 1784–1846 by Geoffrey Wall (review)

Geoffrey Wall has spent decades writing works on the Flaubert family. The Enlightened Physician, a biography of Achille-Cléophas Flaubert, is the latest incarnation of Wall’s larger project. Earlier books focused on Flaubert’s son, Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), including translations of his famous novel Madame Bovary (1992) and Selected Letters (1995), as well as Flaubert: A Life (2001). The biography of the father resulted from several unanswered questions Wall retained after writing Gustave’s biography. Wall, referring to the latter, rhetorically asks where should a biography start? In style and content it is clear that Wall’s other works influenced this biography. Wall explains: “literary translation and biography are complementary modes of knowledge” (p. xvi). Ultimately, Wall’s book is an informative account of a skilled physician who survived, and thrived, through France’s transformative shifts between 1789 and 1840.

Wall logically begins the first chapter with Flaubert’s birth: 14 November 1784, in a rural village in the province of Champagne. The family, situated in the region for generations, included blacksmiths and veterinary surgeons. Flaubert spent his youth in Nogent-sur-Seine, and later studied medicine in Paris. Yet, he ultimately made the unorthodox move of practicing medicine in Rouen, though Paris had superior prospects for ambitious physicians. These locations along the Seine River, Wall suggests, formed a geographical north-south arc in Flaubert’s life. There was also a cultural-political arc: Flaubert came of age under the Ancien régime, studied in Sens during the French Revolution, learned medicine in Paris and advanced as a physician in Rouen under the Napoleonic Empire, and completed his career after France returned to monarchy. Wall documents these stages of Flaubert’s life and his ability to prosper despite political and religious shifts.

Wall’s book features resources to augment the reader’s understanding of the subject. This includes a guide to France’s revolutionary calendar and selections of Flaubert’s case histories (1818-22). There is also a notice for an online download of Wall’s translation of Flaubert’s medical dissertation (1811), which would have provided insights into medicine in this period. However, the translation is not actually available on the publisher’s site. The inclusion of sections of the dissertation as an appendix would have been valuable, as the book is short and online content remains unreliable. Nevertheless, the biography is useful for students and scholars interested in the history of medicine, France, or Europe in the Napoleonic era.

The greatest challenge for the reader is overcoming the influence of literary translation on the historical biography. They may be complimentary forms of knowledge, but a balance in favour of history is not always achieved or maintained. Excessive detail and flowery language at times distracts the reader from historical context. A dearth of primary-source archival material leads to a heavy reliance on secondary sources and Wall’s speculation about events, including Flaubert’s membership in the Freemasons. The conjecture is confusing for the reader and compounded by intermittent use of the present tense to describe past events. In one such section, Wall credits “Dr. Guillotin” as the inventor of the decapitation machine, noting that Guillotin was himself guillotined at Bicêtre hospital in 1793. Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814) promoted this new method of capital punishment, but Dr Antoine Louis (1723-1792) was its inventor. Dr. Guillotin was, furthermore, not executed during the Revolution, but lived another twenty-five years.

The book’s title is appropriate and appealing, closely matching “Enlightened Physicians: Setting Out on an Elite Academic Career in the Second half of the Eighteenth Century,” by Philip Rider and Micheline Louis-Couvoisier, (Bull. Hist. Med., 2010). Flaubert faced challenges similar to past enlightened physicians, as well as those unique to nineteenth-century France’s medical marketplace. Wall modifies “philosopher-practitioners” (praticiens philosophes), which he quotes from his translation of Madame Bovary, to ‘enlightened physician’ (pp. 73, 185). Nevertheless, contemporaries...