Miranda C Marcelo, Alamos María Florencia
Departamento de Neurología, Clínica Las Condes, Santiago, Chile.
Centro Interdisciplinario de Neurociencias, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Rev Med Chil. 2019 Oct;147(10):1329-1334. doi: 10.4067/s0034-98872019001001329.
Emile Zola is one of the greatest writers in universal literature. In his important series of novels called "The Fortune of the Rougon-Macquart", Zola shows a surprising medical knowledge even though he did not have a formal medical education. We highlight not only his outstanding literary talent, but also the scientific relevance of the tremendous contribution to the medical field that can be extracted from his work. In this series, which describe the history of five generations within a large family suffering from neuropsychiatric and general pathologies, Zola emphasizes the hereditary component of several diseases. These observations probably place him as the first novelist who made an explicit emphasis on the power of inheritance in human behavior. He also mentions for the first time several medical aspects that were seldom addressed in the scientific literature of the time, demonstrating the genius of the writer, his outstanding power of observation and the rigorous preparation with which he wrote his work.
埃米尔·左拉是世界文学史上最伟大的作家之一。在他的重要系列小说《卢贡-马卡尔家族的命运》中，尽管左拉没有接受过正规的医学教育，但他展现出了惊人的医学知识。我们不仅要强调他杰出的文学才华，还要突出从他的作品中可以提炼出的、对医学领域的巨大贡献所具有的科学相关性。在这个系列中，左拉描述了一个大家庭五代人的历史，他们饱受神经精神疾病和其他各种疾病的折磨，他强调了几种疾病的遗传因素。这些观察结果或许使他成为首位明确强调遗传因素对人类行为影响的小说家。他还首次提及了当时科学文献中很少涉及的几个医学方面，展现了这位作家的天赋、卓越的观察力以及他在创作作品时所做的严谨准备。
