- Farabeuf
Louis Hubert Farabeuf (1841 – 1910), French
surgeon who is said to have introducedhygiene in French medical schools. His statue dominates the central court of theNational School of Medicine in Paris and the mainamphitheater of it is also named after him. Farabeuf wrote some shortsurgical booklets (précis) and designed several medical instruments that are still in use today. His passionate writings and descriptions ofamputation surgery attracted the attention of several writers.Salvador Elizondo wrote a cryptic biography of Farabeuf in which he emphasized and exaggerated the surgeon’s morbid eroticism. It is through this “secret classic of the aesthetics of evil” that Farabeuf is mostly known. Elizondo presented Farabeuf also as a French secret agent inChina after theBoxer Rebellion , who worked secretly for the FrenchJesuits in sketching a plan for theevangelization ofChina . Elizondo mixed in "Farabeuf, or the chronic of an instant" events that he borrowed from the lives ofDupuytren ,Muybridge ,Daguerre , Nadar, and others.
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