Galdós and Medicine by Michael W. Stannard (review)

Few readers of Galdós will be surprised to learn that he had considerable knowledge of the medical profession. Yet, even the most devoted galdosistas may be awed by just how considerable this knowledge was. Such a thesis, at any rate, sustains Michael W. Stannard in his effort to showcase Galdós’s lifelong affinity for doctors and their craft. The approach is straightforward. Stannard paints a panorama of the historical milieu as it relates to medicine, then accounts for a selection of diseases and other conditions that interested Galdós. We can gauge the degree of this interest according to how accurate, detailed, or prevalent descriptions of these diseases and conditions are in Galdós’s novels. Consequently, Stannard takes pains to inform his readers of the medical players and treatment practices of the period. He then grafts this information onto examples of major and minor characters from selected novels that might confirm or, less frequently, complicate the “truly clinical” (163) eye behind Galdós’s “documentary veracity” (182). In sum, though not a focal element of this study, Galdosian realism has much to do with “the reader’s perception of real life” (181). Stannard fixes his gaze on the “fidelity” of the novel as mirror, in search of a “vivid picture” that might hold the “immediacy” attributable to what Galdós had “witnessed” firsthand (e.g. 66, 96-97, 157-60).

Thus, the pattern that emerges is one of identification and illustration. With each chapter, Stannard identifies problems of public health (epidemics, endemic diseases, alcoholism, madness, eye disease and blindness, childhood diseases) and illustrates their prominence with evidence from Galdós’s biography and novels like El doctor Centeno, Fortunata y Jacinta, Lo prohibido, La familia de León Roch, La desheredada, Marianela, and Ángel Guerra. Stannard navigates the medical subject matter as someone with a background in the field, and readers hopeful to learn more about the history and symptoms of the conditions he treats will not be disappointed. Moreover, social currents of the day—degeneration, evolutionary theory, alienism—find a place in his discussions and enhance what is said about a range of interrelated issues, such as sanitation, mortality rates, asylums, heredity, wet-nurses, prostitution, hygiene, and so forth. Stannard succeeds most notably when he deciphers proof of arcane medical knowledge on the part of Galdós. For example, we discover a description of prosopagnosia, or the inability to recognize faces (126), the use of folie à deux, “the phenomenon of a previously sane person acquiring the delusions of a mad individual” (130), and why and how a lactoscopio is used to measure the cream content of breast milk (172). These moments can deepen one’s appreciation of the surgical precision with which Galdós wrote.

Where Stannard shows himself to be less adept, however, is in the interpretation of this material. It is hard to know when Galdós’s medical mind ornaments his novels, and when it aims to be more than descriptive. There is thus a missed opportunity for binding Galdós and Medicine beyond the historical particularities and examples on display. As it stands, Stannard shows that Galdós “reveals his interest … He is aware … He recognizes … He is also able to identify,” such that the writing in question, “reflects his [Galdós’s] profound interest” in the “medical and social contexts” (59). Or, similarly, “What is remarkable is that he [Galdós] was sufficiently interested in the clinical details to incorporate so many of them” (104). Or, by extension, Galdós has a “verbal debt” and follows “to the letter” those medical experts whom he read (112-13). Hence, under Stannard’s direction, we discover “another instance of Galdós’s unrecognized awareness of contemporary medicine” (131) or Galdós’s “unusual talent for researching medical details and introducing many of them” (173). Alongside digressions, profuse footnotes, plot summaries, and scant dialogue with critics who problematize Galdós, the thesis—that is, Galdós’s interest in medicine led him to write about...