Mauricio Wiesenthal has written of him: “His vocation as a doctor forced him to always live next to death. But he loved life with all his heart“
The Swedish Axel Munthe (1857-1949) was a doctor for the poor and the wealthy; great traveler; great athlete; writer and lover of culture; man of the world; protector of animals. He narrated his intense existence in The history of San Michele, international best seller in the thirties and recognized classic of autobiographical literature.
When he obtained the title early in Paris, this disciple of Charcot became at 22 years the youngest doctor in France. And very soon a figure of reference for French high society.
Dr. Alxel Munthe in Capri, around 1888
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“What is the secret of success (of a doctor)? Munthe wondered. And he answered: – Inspire confidence. And what is trust? Where does it come from? From the head or from the heart? I ignore it; I only know that it cannot be acquired by reading books, nor by the bedside of our patients. It is a magical gift given to a man by birthright and denied to another. The doctor who has that gift can almost raise the dead; Those who do not have it will have to resign themselves to seeing a colleague call for consultation, even for a measles case. I soon discovered that this priceless gift had been granted to me, without any merit of mine“
Merits were not lacking. He was traveling through Lapland when he learned that a cholera epidemic had broken out in Naples. Tired of the inauthenticity of many of his well-to-do patients, imaginary patients who waste his time, he rushes across Europe to go help.
Upon arriving, “half-passed out from the stench of phonic acid on the empty train, I went out into the deserted plaza at dusk: I found through the streets with long lines of cars and buses full of corpses going to the cholera cemetery, and I passed all the night among the dying ”, he described.
He will remember years later that there “I walked day and night through the infected poor neighborhoods, full of lice, feeding on rotten fruit and sleeping in a dirty inn.” In his evocation he does not skimp on the expressionist brushstrokes on the Neapolitan epidemic. “Millions of rats who lived in the sewers without being disturbed by them since Roman times invaded the lower part of the city. Intoxicated by the fumes of sulfur and carbolic acid, they rushed into the slums like mad dogs. I have never been so afraid of any other animal in my life as those crazy rats. ”
In this tough scenario, he also learns to know himself. The older Munthe corrects in this sense the direct notes of the young doctor who was: “I had the audacity to write that I was not afraid of cholera, that I was not afraid of death. I lied. I was terribly afraid of both, since the begging to the end”.
But even in this really extreme situation, the Swedish doctor was always alert to his vital instinct, to the point of starting a timid romance there, in the martyred southern Italy, with a cloistered nun!
Access door to San Michele, with the plaque reminding the figure of Munthe
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The history of San Michele proves that Few stories are more satisfying to the reader than those that bring together a doctor, an unknown ailment, and some picturesque figures. This is how Axel Munthe understood it, recovering with a very good eye for the anecdote, and sense of the plot, the best episodes of his consulting rooms in Paris and Rome.
Some were worthy of a bulletin. Like the story of a prostitute already in very low hours who had her daughter in a strict boarding school for nuns without anyone knowing who was paying. The girl is dying of typhus. The mother, whom she does not know, wants to see her one last time. Munthe slips it between the nuns to assist her in her last hours, disguised as her nurse.
Or that of the wealthy single mother who, after giving birth, abandons her baby, giving him up for adoption, only to later fall into the most frightening depression. And whose brooch, abandoned in the office, reappears years later in an extraordinary coincidence …
Other chapters are tragicomic. Munthe accompanies a sick young man on a trip to Sweden. The boy dies on the way. He has it embalmed and placed in a lead coffin to be able to transfer him. The train also carries the coffin of a dead Russian general, who is accompanied by a drunken old servant. At the border the inevitable confusion occurs. The young man’s family ends up burying the military veteran without knowing it.
Or that of the countess whose ailment lay in being bored with her husband, and who ended up arousing the passions of a brother-in-law, and of the specialist himself …
There is suspense, humor and human vibe in all these stories, regularly overshadowed by terrible scenes. Along with those of the Neapolitan epidemic, Munthe immerses us in those he lives after the Messina earthquake, or the diphtheria epidemic in a Paris neighborhood, with dying children and other Dantesque images.
Thus, the author will verify the inexorable, exponential advance of the scythe in those catastrophes of his time that he contributed to alleviate: a thousand daily deaths in Naples; one hundred thousand in Messina; 400,000 on the plains of Flanders and the Somme, during the First World War …
Munthe carefully doses the doses of affection and irony when he portrays personalities such as Guy de Maupassant or his teacher Charcot. Y his point of view is that of a liberal humanist, skeptical of the churches, understanding in sexual matters and a supporter of euthanasia, advancing conducts today in force.
The whole of San Michele, seen from the air
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The great project of this lover of Italy was the wonderful villa of San Michele, on Anacapri, in Naples, built from a chapel and some Roman ruins on Mount Barbarossa that he bought in his youth from a peasant.
He rebuilt it, partly with his own hands, turning it into a crossroads of vernacular architecture and domus Roman. He filled it with works of art acquired throughout the country: from an Egyptian sphinx of 3200 B.C. to sculptures of Ulysses and Hermes, a Medusa head or a spectacular 13th century mosaic table. He surrounded it with an elegant garden and, promoting concerts and cultural gatherings, made San Michele a reference for pre-WWII cosmopolitan society.
Married twice, and many times separated, Munthe was the GP, confidante and perhaps a little more of Queen Victoria of Sweden, who often enjoyed the privileged space. Even today, as the headquarters of the Axel Munthe Foundation, the Italian town constitutes an obligatory landmark for the cultured tourism that crosses the South of Italy (these days, of course, it is also closed).
The publishing company Libros de Vanguardia recovered a few years ago The history of San Michele
in full version, with an epilogue by Dr. Jordi Rius and an appendix of illustrations on the life of Munthe and on San Michele as it can be seen now.
There is a lot of good medical and medical literature, but perhaps Axel Munthe’s is the classic reference in the field, at least in our field: European memoirs comparable to those of Stefan Zweig, the work of a doctor who never gave upAnd because he loved life, and knew how to enjoy it like no one else, he turned like few others to fighting death.
AXEL MUNTHE: THE STORY OF SAN MICHELE. Nanny Wachsmut translation, revised. Introduction by Mauricio Wiesenthal. Epilogue of doctor Jordi Rius. CUTTING EDGE BOOKS. 480 pages, 22 euros
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