Louis-Ferdinand Destouches’ Medical Writing: An Apologia for Industrial and Social Modernization

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of the medical writings of Louis-Ferdinand Destouches. These writings reveal a critical reflection, in no way a whitewash, on hygiene and public health problems imposed by the war of 14–18. These medical writings, immediate post-war products, show thinking which is in line with the social and ideological ideas we find in Semmelweis, the first of the texts collected in Celine Book 3 (The Basedowine closes collection). Contemporary with the debates of the 20s, he questioned medical theses dedicated to the glorification of industrial and social modernization. Here is presented and clarified some data on their acceptance by the medical profession, the development of Destouches’ career, and his vision of his profession, concluding that these medical writings can be considered embryonic of the views of the man who would become Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Written, mostly, on behalf of the League of Nations during the period 1924–1932, these medical writings, like his medical history, provide the main leitmotifs that will illustrate the Celinian universe: miserable conditions, poverty, alcoholism and human degradation, all the things that made it difficult to exercise the profession of doctor in the urban-industrial society of the early twentieth century.

Medicine was my calling (…) Since I was a child I have dreamed of becoming a doctor, I dreamed of healing people (…)

(Céline, 1961, p. 207)