Patrick Rambaud

On quite a few occasions in the past I have blogged on about historical fiction, a genre of which I did not use to approve but about which I am becoming more relaxed. Stories built on history perhaps do have a worthwhile place in the world. See references 1 and 2 for the collected works.

Now this morning I was reading the third and last volume of Patrrck Rambaud's take on the fall of Napoleon, otherwise three episodes taken from his downward trajectory from the glory of Austerlitz: the battle of Aspern, the Russian adventure and the passage to Elba. See reference 3 for some of the notices of same.

And I come across a passage involving the Emperor injecting himself in a delicate place, more or less in public, with some mixture made up by his personal chemist, on account of what is euphemistically termed a 'maladie galante'. Not the first time that I have read about how insouciant the great are about exhibiting their intimate life to their immediate entourage. A reading which extends to our own prime ministers.

But the point of present post is the injection, the 'piqûre'. According to wikipedia, while crude knowledge of the possibility of injections was available to the ancient Greeks, such things were not really known until the middle of the 19th century, long after the time in question.

So what is going on? Were injections available to the rich at the time in question - a possibility suggested at reference 4? Have I got it all wrong? Has Rambaud made it up or made a mistake? Sadly, my French is not good enough to extract any clues about that from the context, so I am left wondering how much of the period colour, the period incidents has been made up. Illustrating nicely my difficulty with this whole genre: which bits can you trust and which bits can you not?

See page 155 of the Grasset edition of 'L'Absent' for the full story. Perhaps a better informed reader will be able to inform me.

PS: oddly, I think that today is the first time that I have bothered to find out where Elba is or how big it is. Rather bigger than I was expecting, for some reason, and a lot nearer Italy. I suppose I had just vaguely thought of it as being somewhere in the middle of the north western Mediterranean.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=historical+fiction.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=historical+fiction.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=rambaud.

Reference 4: http://www.exchangesupplies.org/article_history_of_injecting_and_development_of_the_syringe.php.