Exactly 109 years ago, on October 26, 1916, the French army's chief medical officer, Dr. Gèrard Encausse, passed away. He went down in history under the pseudonym Papus (a name taken from Apollonius of Tyana's Nuctemeron and corresponding, in fact, to the genius of medicine).
Papus died in the main military hospital in Paris, located on the Ile de France, where he had been admitted a few days earlier due to the after-effects of a serious infectious disease contracted at the front where...