Avi Ohry
Tel Aviv, Israel

Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Howard Fischer (1947–2024).

Three persons bearing the name Mauriac are remembered to have achieved a place of distinction in French literature and medicine. The most famous of these was François Charles Mauriac¹ (1885–1970), “a French novelist, dramatist, critic, poet, and journalist,” author of A Kiss for the Leper and Flesh and Blood. He was a member of the Académie Française and laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1952). In 1958 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d’honneur. Some of his literary heroes suffer from tuberculosis, cardiac insufficiency, angina pectoris, puerperal and typhoid fevers and other diseases.²

Léonard Pierre Mauriac^3,4 (1882–1963) was François’ brother, a hero during World War I, professor of medicine and writer in Bordeaux. He described the “Mauriac syndrome” as a juvenile (brittle) diabetes-dwarfism-obesity syndrome. Hepatomegaly may be present, also ocular features—a typical diabetic cataract due to nutritional deficiencies and lack of insulin.

But there is another Mauriac, Dr. Charles Marie Tamarelle Mauriac (1832–1905), who described erythema nodosum as a manifestation of tertiary syphilis. This Mauriac served as a physician and venerologist at the Hôpital du Midi in Paris. He was mentioned in the Chicago Medical Journal⁵: “The division of syphilis into secondary, tertiary and even quaternary periods is entirely artificial and arbitrary, and, as Mauriac has pointed out, is no more applicable to syphilis, than to any other constitutional disease.” Dr. Charles Mauriac publicly opposed regulation of prostitution in France.⁶

References

1. François Mauriac. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Mauriac
2. Derquenne F. “Maladies pulmonaires et autres pathologies dans l’œuvre de François Mauriac et Pierre Benoit” [“Lung diseases and miscellaneous pathologies in the novels of François Mauriac and Pierre Benoit”]. Hist Sci Med Oct 2016;50(2):185-98.
3. Battin J. “Pierre et François Mauriac, une amitié fraternelle privilégiée” [“Pierre and François Mauriac, a privileged friendship between brothers”]. Hist Sci Med 2016;50(2):175-83.
4. Posen S. The Doctor in Literature, Volume 2: Private Life. Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing, 2006: 13.
5. Hyde JN. “On the Unity or Duality of Syphilis.” Chicago Medical Journal 1873;30(9):530-41.
6. Note 60 in: Graham PN. “Sex work, containment and the new discourse of public health in French colonial Levant.” Medical History 2021;65(4):330-46.