In Memoriam: Mirko Drazen Grmek, 9 January 1924-6 March 2000

At two o'clock every Thursday afternoon from November to June, some twenty people would climb Escalier E of the Sorbonne and venture through the doors of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, IVe Section, to the classroom at the end of the hall. On bare, noisy floorboards, with opaque windows on both sides, the tables and scraping chairs were arranged in a big U around a professorial desk, with a blackboard behind and a clock high to the left. The master would arrive for his seminar with papers and a pile of books. Tall, vigorous, with thinning grey hair and clear blue eyes, he would smile vaguely as he surveyed the assembly before launching into his presentation. He began with verbal reviews of new books, in French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and ancient Greek. Had he actually managed to read them all since the seminar last week? It seemed that he had: his criticisms were comprehensive, incisive, and balanced. Then on to the topic for the week. He would talk until four o'clock, recounting the adventure of a single research project on some aspect of medical history, often quite minute. The scope and depth of his erudition were breathtaking. The topic could derive from an article he had already published (although he would not necessarily say where); less frequently, he would float new ideas from work in progress. The subject matter changed every week and every year (and it was rarely announced ahead of time), but antiquity and modern medicine tended to alternate from class to class--and the audience would change accordingly. Students (many of them foreigners) teachers, later-life learners, scientists, physicians, Sorbonne professors, and one peculiar bag lady slowly came to recognize (if not know) each other as regulars; they shook hands and said "Bonjour!" The faithful came every week; those who attended alternate classes to satisfy special interests modestly claimed that it was their special ignorance that kept them away.

After an hour or so, sometimes at the end, the master would ask if there were any questions. Rarely, a lone speaker--often a newcomer or, perhaps, a professor--would express curiosity, a difficulty, or a misunderstanding. The assembly would wait quietly to watch, as much as hear, the reply. A flicker of irritation or a smile of delight would pass across the master's face before he would answer, indulgently or dismissively--impossible to predict. After attempting a question once or twice, some students feared asking again: it might insult the wisdom they had just been offered, and expose the disappointing feebleness of their comprehension. Better to remain silent and listen.

From 1973, when he was appointed "Directeur d'études" at the École Pratique, until his retirement in 1989, Mirko Grmek's "auditeurs" heard a vast array of discussions on topics ranging from prehistory to AIDS: ancient hysteria as carbon monoxide poisoning, Galen's experimentation, medieval horoscopes, the discovery of the blind spot, an unpublished correspondence between Pasteur and Lister, Bernard's "piqûre diabétique," molecular biology, the notion of "new disease." And yet Grmek spoke almost exclusively of ideas, knowledge, and especially disease concepts. He referred often to the notion of "epistemological rupture," which he attributed to Gaston Bachelard, and he explained his own concept of "pathocenosis," the word he had coined in 1969. As for method, he recognized fellow scholars, but insisted on primary sources, manuscripts, letters, first drafts, and laboratory notebooks. He might praise or make light of certain secondary sources, but did not waste time skewering their inadequacies. For him, the central task was the question, the argument, and the evidence. Given his philological expertise, the analysis could turn on the shifting meaning of individual words. He circulated his research notes, 3 x 5 inch white cards (with bibliographic references) kept in his tiny script, always in blue ink. Speaking or writing, he preferred the passive voice...