| Abstract: | Although the career of Thierry de Martel, one of France's most illustrious neurosurgeons, would seem primarily of interest to historians of medicine, his life and self‐inflicted death can be inscribed into different contexts. De Martel can be considered representative of what Jean Touchard calls ‘l'esprit des années trente’, a spirit both of malaise and revolt which prompted many among the First World War generation to seek new political and intellectual alternatives to replace what they deemed the morally bankrupt ones of the Third Republic. Both because of his connections with Parisian literary and political circles, and the paradoxical nature of his ideological itinerary between the wars (encompassing both proto‐fascism and Germanophobia), de Martel's case is particularly interesting. This biographical portrait of a previously unstudied ‘nonconformist’ in turn serves as a prism through which to view the ferment of the interwar period. |
