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HISTORICAL NEUROLOGY: J. Pearn and C. Gardner–Thorpe Jules Cotard (1840–1889): His life and the unique syndrome which bears his name Neurology 2002; 58: 1400-1403 [Abstract] [Full text] [PDF]

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Reply to Letter to the Editor

John Pearn, Christopher Gardner-Thorpe   (25 June 2002)

Jules Cotard (1840–1889): His life and the unique syndrome which bears his name

AC Trujillano   (25 June 2002)

Reply to Letter to the Editor 25 June 2002
John Pearn Royal Children's Hospital Brisbane Australia, Christopher Gardner-Thorpe Send Correspondence to journal: Re: Reply to Letter to the Editor j.pullen{at}mailbox.uq.edu.au John Pearn, et al.	Dr Trujillano rightly asks for evidence of Marcel Proust’s characterisation of Professor Cottard, based on Dr Jules Cotard (1840- 1889) in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. [1] The question is an important one as The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes Proust’s work of 1919 as “one of the supreme achievements of world literature.” [2] Who was Proust’s model? Painter, one of Marcel Proust’s most quoted biographers, believed the character of Cottard was an amalgam of Dr Pozzi, Albert Vandal, Jules Cotard and a Dr Cottet who lived at Evian. [3] We believe this is too broad. Proust characterised Professor Cottard as “not merely an obscure practitioner ……. [but one] of the leading men [to whom] other young doctors, if they themselves ever fell ill, would entrust their lives.” [4] Further, Proust painted Cottard as a brilliant diagnostician, yet as a shy, timid man who repressed himself in social circumstances and eschewed social trivia for self-promotion. [5] These facets of Cottard’s persona fit those of the real life Dr Jules Cotard better than those of any of the other doctors. Furthermore, Dr Jules Cotard (1840-1889) was also of “a serious and reflective character” [5] and was accused by his friends “of not being ambitious enough.” [5] The parallelism to Cottard’s persona is striking. In Proust’s novel the Cottards are described as being “devoted to their babies”. In real life, Dr Jules Cotard died for the love of his daughter. If one adds to this the obvious parallelism of the name, acknowledged by Painter, the nexus seems inescapable. [6] How did Proust know Cotard? Marcel Proust’s father was Dr Adrien Proust, a prominent Parisian surgeon and one founder of modern preventive medicine. Dr Adrien Proust was a classmate of Dr Jules Cotard at the Ecole de Mëdecine. It is inescapable that these two leading Parisian doctors knew each other. Proust’s son, Marcel, knew his father’s contemporaries. Marcel Proust’s (1871-1922) and Dr Jules Cotard’s (1840- 1889) lives overlapped for the first 19 years of the novelist’s life. It is known that some of Proust’s great novel, published in 1919, was written during his earlier life. One holds to the expressed opinion that the contiguity, in time and place, of the family lives of both the Prousts and the Cotards, and the striking similarity of the personality of Dr Cotard with the characterisation of Professor Cottard cannot otherwise be interpreted than that Jules Cotard was the model for this famous medical character. REFERENCES: 1.Proust, Marcel. Within a Budding Grove [A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs]. 1918. Volume 2 : Part 1. In : A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff. London, Chatto and Windus, 1972. 1. 2.Anon. Proust, Marcel (1871-1922) In: Encyclopaedia Britannica Micropaedia. Vol VIII, 15 Edition. Chicago, Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 1974:256-257. 3.Painter G.D. Marcel Proust. A Biography. Vol I. London, Chatto and Windus, 1959:331. 4.Proust, Marcel. Op Cit. See Ref 1: 4,5. 5.Ritti Antoine. Eloge du Docteur Jules Cotard [From a Paper read at the Annual Public Lecture of the Sociëtë Medico-Psychologique, on 30 April 1894]. Paris, Imprimeric de la Cour d’Appel, 1894. 1-10. 6.Painter G.D. Op Cit. See Ref 3: 2.
Jules Cotard (1840–1889): His life and the unique syndrome which bears his name 25 June 2002
AC Trujillano Columbia SC Send Correspondence to journal: Re: Jules Cotard (1840–1889): His life and the unique syndrome which bears his name sandi_moriarity{at}urmc.rochester.edu AC Trujillano	In the excellent article by Pearn and Gardner-Thorpe, the authors state that Marcel Proust immortalized J. Cotard as the Dr. Cottard in À la recherché du temps perdu. [1] This is not so clear. Proust very often-made characters based on composite traits of multiple persons, and it is risky to say that so- and-so represents a specific individual in his book. George D. Painter, in part 1, chapter 7 of his biography on Proust, thinks that proustian Cottard is Dr. Pozzi-a flamboyant urologist, womanizer, painted by Sargent, and ultimately shot by one of his patients. Tadié thinks that Dr. Pozzi and Marcel Proust’s father are combined in the description of Cottard’s character. There are two recent excellent biographies in English by J-Y Tadié [Viking 2000] and W. C. Carter [Yale University Press 2000] in addition to the 1959 edition by G. D. Painter that should be read before embarking on Proust in order to understand À la recherché. References: 1. Pearn J, Gardner-Thorpe C. Jules Cotard (1840-1889)His life and the unique syndrome which bears his name. Neurology 2002;58:1400-1403.