The fate of Rose Anna Shedlock (c1850–1878) and the early career of Émile Roux (1853

Abstract

The 1878 marriage of Rose Anna Shedlock and Émile Roux was a closely guarded secret. Shedlock studied medicine at Edinburgh with Sophia Jex-Blake (1840–1912) and her fellow students but is not mentioned by name in the usual accounts of their battle for recognition by the University. Subsequently Shedlock attended the Paris medical school where she probably met Emile Roux who was attached to the military medical school of the Val-de-Grâce before his dismissal in 1876. Documentation of this episode and of Roux’s life over the next two years is fragmentary and inaccurate. Sadly, Shedlock died, probably of tuberculosis, in 1879. In a romanticized and highly inaccurate biography Roux’s niece suggested that Rose Anna contracted tuberculosis from Roux whose life was later blighted by the disease. However, Shedlock was unwell for some years before they married and it seems far more likely that she passed the disease on to him.

Keywords

Rose Anna Shedlock Émile Roux

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

McIntyre

. Britain’s first medical marriage: Frances Morgan (1843–1927), George Hoggan (1837–1891) and the mysterious ‘Elsie’. Journal of Medical Biography 2004; 12: 105–114.

Details of her birth have not been found although Census returns suggest it was in 1849 or early 1950.

UK Census returns 1851, 1861, 1871.

Shedlock

. Beethoven, London: George Bell & Sons, 1903.

Marilyn Lea Millers, Pioneers and Leaders in Library services to youth: a biographical dictionary. Libraries Unlimited Inc. ISBN 1-59158- 028-5, 2003, pp. 222--223.

McIntyre

. The marriage (1878) of Émile Roux (1853–1933) and Rose Anna Shedlock (b. c. 1850). Journal of Medical Biography 2008; 16: 175–176.

Todd M (1918) The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake. London: Macmillan; Matrikel der Universität Zürich 1833--1910 (14), http://www.matrikel. unizh.ch/pages/0.ht; Edmunds's school is described in Blake C. The Charge of the Parasols. London: The Women's Press, 1990.

Scottish Law Reporter. October 1872-October 1873; X: 553.

Lancaster

. Case of the Senatus Academicus of the University of Scotland, W Burness: Edinburgh, 1872, pp. 22–22.

10.

Personal communication, Mrs Irene Ferguson, Assistant to the University Archivist, Special Collections, Edinburgh University.

11.

Todd M. (op. cit. ref 7): London, pp. 358--359.

12.

http://www.bium.univ-paris5.fr/histmed/medica/femmesmed_va.htm .

13.

I am particularly grateful to Natalie Pigeard-Micault. I went to Paris to search for information about Shedlock in the Archives Nationales only to find that the relevant part of the Archives had just closed for three months. Natalie subsequently searched on my behalf and was able to find the relevant documents - and to interpret them, which I could not have done.

14.

Cressac

. Le Docteur Roux; Mon Oncle, Paris: L’Arche, 1950.

15.

Lagrange

. Monsieur Roux, Brussels,: Editions Goemaere, 1954.

16.

Perrot

Schwartz

. Pasteur et ses lieutenants: Roux, Yersin et les autres, Paris: Odile Jacob Sciences, 2013.

17.

Roux

. Comptes Rendus de L’Academie Sciences. Des variations dans la Quantité d'urée excretée avec une alimentation normale et sous l'influence du thé et du café 1873; 77: 365–367.

18.

Roux

. Archives de physiologie normale et pathologique. 2nd Series 1874; 1: 578–594.

19.

Lagrange É. (op.cit. ref .15): pp. 18--19.

20.

Ibid: p.19.

21.

‘Correspondance de 1850 à 1880’, École du Val-de-Grâce (Registrers), Carton No.144; 1875, 8 May, 8 November.

22.

Batholow R. Manual of hypodermic medication. Philadelphia: JP Lippincott, 1873, p. 25; Dormandy T. Opium: reality's dark dream. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012, p. 120.

23.

Communication from Dr Joseph Hassenforder presented to Archives de l’Institut Pasteur 26 October 1954. I am grateful to Sandra Legout of the Pasteur Institute for sending me a copy of this communication and for her great help in other ways. I also thank Bill Dinning for his help in translating some of more difficult French documents to which I refer.

24.

Jullian, Tombareau, Sauniez, Monthieu and Gauthier.

25.

‘Correspondance de 1850 à 1880’ (op.cit. ref. 22): 14 August 1876.

26.

Cressac M. (op.cit. ref 14): pp. 55--57.

27.

Perrot A and Schwartz M. (op.cit. ref 16): p. 76.

28.

Lagrange É. (op.cit. ref .15): p. 21.

29.

Letter Marie Barthelemy (APHP) to Sandra Legout (Pasteur Institute) 30 May 2013, Ref MB 4505–2013.

30.

Lagrange É. (op.cit. ref .15): p. 22.

31.

Bulloch

. Obituary notice of deceased member: Émile Roux 1853–1933. Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology 1941; 38: 99–105.

32.

Cressac M. (op. cit. ref 14): pp. 77--78.

33.

Perrot A and Schwartz M. (op.cit. ref 16): pp. 91--92.

34.

Ibid. p. 94.

35.

Ibid. p. 121.

36.

Cressac M. (op.cit. ref 14): pp. 77--79.

The fate of Rose Anna Shedlock (c1850–1878) and the early career of Émile Roux (1853–1933)

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References