Life imitates art: The physician in a time of plague

When I was a freshman in college, a friend gave me a copy of Albert Camus’s The Plague, a Nobel Prize winning novel about a modern city in Algeria that was devastated by bubonic plague.1 This novel follows the life of Dr. Bernard Rieux, a general practitioner, who is caught up in the chaotic conditions that develop in the city of Oran during a plague epidemic. Dr. Rieux’s daily tasks during this time of plague consist of visiting homes and ascertaining whether individuals living there have been affected by the bubonic plague.