A Case for Literary Malpractice: The Use of Camus's The Plague in American Medical Schools

Among these are: Penn State University School of Medicine, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, The University of Rochester School of Medicine. The University of Illinois Medical School at Chicago, Texas A & M University School of Medicine, Emory University Medical School, etc. …

Camus studied the history, symptoms and statistics of the disease. See Bree Germaine Camus (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1959), p. 117, and Herbert R. Lottman, Albert Camus, a Biography (New York: Doubleday, 1979), p. 264.

Camus Albert The Plague, translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1964). All subsequent quotes are taken from this edition.

See Margrou E. “Le Traitement de la peste bubonique …,” Bulletin de la Sociétè de Pathologie Exotique, Vol. 39 (1946), p. 117.

See Donatien A. “Technique actuelle da la préparation du sérum antipestique,” Archives de l‘Institut Pasteur d’ Algérie. Vol. 19 (1941), p. 71.

Carmen J. A. in the East African Medical Journal, Vol. 14 (1938), p. 362; cited by Pollitzer, p. 457.

See Pollitzer R. M.D. Plague (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1954), pp. 457–470.

Indeed, at the end of the book, Tarrou, another of Dr. Rieux's friends, catches the plague and dies on the very day the town's gates are opened and quarantine is lifted.

See Gueniot M. “La Peste”, Médecine de France, Vol. I (1949), p. 5. Aimé Dupuy, “A Propos de La Peste d'Albert Camus”, La Presse Médicale, Vol. 71 (Jan. 5, 1963), pp. 37-38. Dr. Antoine Lacroix, “Les Médecins dans l‘oeuvre d’Albert Camus et plus particulièrement dans La Peste”, Histoire de la Médecine (Nov. 1966), pp. 2-11.

Camus himself did not believe that medicine, Christian ethics or religion were compatible: “One realizes that they are irreconcilable, and that one must choose between the relative and the absolute. If I believed in God, I should not treat mankind.” Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1942-1952. translated by Justin O'Brien (New York: Harcourt, 1965), p. 92. Camus stated this position even more directly to the medical profession in a short text entitled “Exhortation to the Physicians of The Plague: “You will not follow that religion which is as old as the most ancient cults. … from the day when it came crashing down on our innocent city, it has not ceased from decimating the men and from demanding the sacrifice of children. And if this religion were to come to us from Heaven, you would then have to say that Heaven is unrighteous.” Camus Albert “Les Archives de la peste,” in Les Cahiers de la Pléiade, Vol. I, 2 (1947), pp. 151–152. [Translated from the French.]

Dickey James “Them, crying” in Poems, 1957-1967 (Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), n.p.