A lovely copy with an excellent association. Inscribed “À mon ami le Dr. Dartigues en témoignage de mon admiration Dr. Casséus. Paris, le 26 avril 1911.”
Written on the cusp of the First World War, the text is adapted from a lecture given before the École des Hautes Études Sociales in February, 1910.
Situated between the likes of Alexander Crummell and Franz Fanon, Auguste Casséus (1871-1926) formed part of an important trio with Edward Blyden and W.E.B du Bois as the prominent exponents of Pan-Africanism.
Casséus writes [in translation]: “At the origin of human societies, the Black man was the first guide and the first teacher of humanity, the first father of science and the arts, the founder of the brilliant Egyptian civilization … more recently, when the first inhabitants of the New World were destroyed by Spanish cruelty and tyranny, it was the sons of Africa who would go on to develop the immense natural riches of young America … when later the peoples of the New World sought to free themselves from the tyranny of an oppressive culture and raised the standard of freedom, Black people would be at the forefront of those who shed their blood for the triumph of the noble cause …” (p.92)
He devotes plenty of space to African-American history and, in doing so, discusses Christopher Columbus, Bartolomé de las Casas, Cromwell, La Fayette, Washington (p.81), Toussaint Louverture, Wendell Philipps, and, of course, Abraham Lincoln (p.84). He even quotes from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (p.69).
Auguste Casséus (1871-1926) trained as a physician in Paris and became an assistant to the eminent gynecologist, Samuel Pozzi (1846-1918). During the First World War, Casséus directed the Pavilion Ledoyen clinic in Paris. He saved the lives of many hundreds of wounded Allied soldiers and was awarded the Legion d’Honneur in 1920. After the war, Casséus returned to Haiti and entered government service. Around 1924 he was appointed Haiti’s Ambassador to France.
A student of Samuel Pozzi, Louis Dartigues was an eminent physician in his own right and became the Director of a French medical mission to the Caucasus at the end of the Russian Revolution.
Scarce: OCLC locates copies at NYPL, Florida, and Cornell, plus five in France.
Gilbrin, E., “Le Docteur Louis Dartigues. L’hôpital chirurgical français de Tiflis, août 1917-mai 1918, communication présentée à la séance du 26 novembre 1977 de la Société française d’histoire de la médecine”
