Marguerite Delorme’s depiction of lung decortication, 1894

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dc.contributor.authorKelly, Mary
dc.contributor.funderUniversity College Cork
dc.contributor.funderCommission on Women and Gender Studies in History of Science, Technology and Medicine, DHST (IUHPST).
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-16T08:50:03Z
dc.date.available2026-07-16T08:50:03Z
dc.date.issued2026-06-29
dc.description.abstractOn 9 September 1893 the French physician Professor Edmond Delorme first performed pulmonary decortication surgery to treat empyema at Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris. Including crude forms of early anaesthesia, this moment of discovery was captured by his daughter the painter Marguerite Delorme (1876-1946) in ‘Professor Edmond Delorme (1847-1929) Describing Lung Decortication to Trainee Doctors of the Val-de-Grâce, 1894’, 1897 (herein after ‘Val-de-Grâce, 1894’). Although medical painting was a well-established practice, works located in military hospitals were highly unusual. In 1894, Val-de-Grâce was both a military hospital and a teaching facility with an all-male medical studentship. That the painting was created by a woman artist in such a masculine space makes this depiction of historical surgery and anaesthesia practices rarer still. Adopting a gendered lens for the purpose of offering new insights into the area of medical painting, I will use ‘Val-de-Grâce, 1894’ to create a bridge between medical and art practices. Such high-art medical subject matter was generally inaccessible to women artists during the nineteenth century and, on creating the painting, Delorme interrupted male medical spaces by claiming a female space in the operating theatre of Val-de-Grâce. Pushing this gendered discussion even further, the study will explore how ‘Val-de-Grâce, 1894’ subverts the Foucauldian concept of the medical gaze.en
dc.description.sponsorshipThe author would like to sincerely thank the following people and organisations for their generous support during the research, development and writing phases of this study: Michèle Périssère, Conservateur Général du Patrimoine, Musée du Service de Santé des Armées, Paris
dc.description.sponsorshipSonja Poncet, Aide de Collection Patrimoniale, Musée d’Histoire de la Médecine, Paris
dc.description.sponsorshipand the editorial team at Modern & Contemporary France. I am very grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this article for their constructive feedback. Their combined notes were particularly valuable in shaping the analysis of the medical gaze, which strengthened the scholarly rigour of the final manuscript. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Professor Ciara Breathnach, University College Cork
dc.description.sponsorshipDr Catherine Lawless, Trinity College Dublin
dc.description.sponsorshipand Professor Anthony McElligott, University of Limerick for their continued support and academic guidance. A very early draft of this work was presented at the 27th International Congress of History of Science & Technology (ICHST) held in Dunedin, New Zealand, 29 June to 5 July 2025: I wish to thank Dr Adéla Jůnová Macková, Department for the History of the Academy of Sciences, Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Czech Academy of Science, Prague, Czech Republic, for including the work in her fascinating panel. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the Commission on Women and Gender Studies in History of Science, Technology and Medicine, DHST (IUHPST) for funding the initial conference paper
dc.description.sponsorshipand the School of History, the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, UCC for funding this research. My thanks also to the Boole Library, UCC and IReL who generously provided funding for Open Access publication.
dc.description.versionPublished Version
dc.format.extent20
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.authororcidKelly, Mary§0000-0002-5793-4475
dc.identifier.citationKelly, M 2026, 'Marguerite Delorme’s depiction of lung decortication, 1894', Modern and Contemporary France, pp. 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2026.2677061
dc.identifier.doi10.1080/09639489.2026.2677061
dc.identifier.endpage20
dc.identifier.issn0963-9489
dc.identifier.journaltitleModern and Contemporary France
dc.identifier.startpage1
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/19075
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherTaylor and Francis Ltd.
dc.relation.urihttps://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105043559665
dc.rights© 2026, the Authors. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any med-ium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this articlehas been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
dc.rights.accessrightsopen access
dc.rights.licensenameAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.statusPeer reviewed
dc.subject19th Century art history
dc.subjectMedical humanities
dc.subjectWomen’s art
dc.subject[History]
dc.titleMarguerite Delorme’s depiction of lung decortication, 1894en
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)
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