Medicine and disease in the letters of Juliette Drouet

Juliette Drouet’s letters to Victor Hugo provide an unexpected and valuable source to the history of medicine. She often comments on her health and enquires about Hugo's and his relatives'. Even minor diseases could be fatal at the time, when symptoms were still largely unknown or misinterpreted.

Paris was struck by recurrent cholera epidemics, including one in 1849 that terrified Drouet to such an extent that she tried several remedies to protect her and Hugo from the "blue death".

In this letter, dated 15 June 1849 (see image), she advises Hugo to keep with him a bottle of vinegar ("cassolette de vinaigre"), in order to breathe the vapour. Drouet adds that she will buy some flasks of "acali volatil" (a solution of ammonia) to protect themselves against the cholera.

In other letters, she mentions that she and Hugo had fumigations; nowadays, this process is only used to eradicate pests in houses, but in the 19th century people could fumigate themselves.

At the time, the medical consensus was that epidemics spread through ‘miasma’ (bad air) - hence the use of vinegar vapour as an antiseptic. It was replaced a few years later by the germ theory, notably after the works of John Snow during the London cholera epidemic of 1854, which proved that cholera actually spread through contaminated water.

Image credit Leeds University Library