"That anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignifi cant a creature as the comma bacillus," wrote Marcel Proust, should not be astonishing to those in the know. Plagued by illness from childhood, the author was very much in tune with medicine, which he pondered often in Remembrance of Things Past (1913), his monumental novel on the nature of memory. He also knew about cholera. His father, eminent physician and public health pioneer Achille-Andrien Proust, dedicated much of his life to promoting cordon sanitaire for the control of the disease, convinced that "questions of international hygiene reach beyond the borders established by politics." The elder Proust's idea, ahead of his time, challenged free trade so it was not until the Bombay cholera epidemic of 1877 that the concept of quarantine prevailed over commercialism and self-interest
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