FLAUBERT AND US

«The heart is a wealth that is not sold and is not bought, it is donated»

This citation of Gustave Flaubert is the striking motto of the EHLTC Lignano 2018.

G. Flaubert (1821-1880), a famous french author (i.e. Madame Bovary), was born in Rouen (Normandy, France) in the past hospital Hôtel-Dieu where his father was surgeon. This very old hospital has been transfer in 1965 in modern buildings (Hôpital Charles-Nicolle, this one also born in Rouen and Nobel prize in medicine in 1928), a Museum dedicated to Flaubert being still located in the Hôtel-Dieu.

His statue is now in front of this new hospital.

In this hospital more than 400 heart transplants have been performed since 1986.

So the citation of Flaubert is very appropriate in this place !

One can ask where to find it in the monumental opus of Flaubert.
There is a « Centre Flaubert » in the University of Rouen whom task was to numerise the manuscripts of Flaubert. So It is very amazing to found the hand written citation in a letter of Flaubert to a friend in 1840, january the 19th, 127 years before
the first successfull human heart transplant of Professor Barnard.

That's the origin of the Lignano 2018's motto!!!

Thanks to our friends Jean Claude Fenyo, who made this study!!