Antoine Gros’s Bonaparte Visitant les Pestiférés de Jaffa: Propaganda or a Medical Illustration?

Abstract

In September 1804 the French painter Antoine-Jean Gros first exhibited the painting Bonaparte visitant les pestiférés de Jaffa, illustrating Bonaparte touching the bubo of a plague-stricken soldier in Jaffa hospital during the Egyptian campaign. Today, this work is interpreted as blatant propaganda. However, the use of primary sources to reconstruct how people experienced illness in the past is essential. In this work, for the first time we propose a primarily medical interpretation of Gros's painting. According to medicine prior to the "germ theory", fear was considered a moral affection negatively influencing both the contagion and the outcome of plague. Therefore, holding back the fear was the best way to prevent the plague. French medical officers acted accordingly, providing encouraging examples to the soldiers. Especially, the medical officer Desgenettes voluntarily exposed himself to the risk of contagion, inoculating himself with a contaminated lancet. Napoleon's act of touching the bubo depicted by Gros in the painting provided soldiers with another encouraging demonstration of genuine therapeutic value, considering the medicine of the time. It seems, therefore, plausible to conclude that Gros faithfully represented a situation imbued with medical meaning, fully understandable by the public.