Du désespoir au salut: les tuberculeux aux 19e et 20e siècles

he regarded as his College, and took great delight in the ceremonial aspects ofthe presidency. He designed the coat of arms, and the President's gown in which his portrait was painted by J. B. Souter in 1932. There, robed and stern, he stares down, daring anyone to cross swords with him. When his term as President came to an end he refused to hand over the gown to his successor. He kept it and was buried with it, if not in it. In 1934, after Blair-Bell had relinquished all official connexions with the College, he wrote its history, and attached to it some extraordinary instructions: that it should be published "not sooner than fifteen years after my death and not until after the death of the last surviving member of the Finance and Executive Committee". The history opens with: "The soul's awakening is not a sudden blinding revelation of a ray of sunshine bursting through the clouds, it is the slowly reached realisation of the truth: it is the harvest that follows the sowing of the seed." The conditions imposed were unnecessary; the "history" is unpublishable. Sir John Peel, leaning over to be fair, admits it is "rather tedious reading, and would never have been regarded by Blair-Bell himself as in a suitable condition for publication." Here, then, was a man who achieved much through energy, and monstrously tenacious ambition; a man who was regarded by his junior staff not with affection but respect mixed with awe and fear. Those who found him likeable seem to have been colleagues who toed the line or those too senior to be quarrelled with. He found his friends amongst the members of the gynaecological visiting society that he created. His home life was, to say the least, mysterious. He married his cousin Florence in 1898. There were no children and for the next thirty years until her death in 1929, "she remained a shadowy figure". None of the Blair-Bell's colleagues ever met her, not even those who worked most closely with him. There were rumours that she occupied a separate part of the house, that she suffered from mental illness. Certainly, in her final illness she was nursed in part of the house which had no connexion with the part occupied by Blair-Bell. After her death, as if in expiation, Blair-Bell endowed a lectureship in her name, named a house after her which …