[The role of disease and Medicine in the life and work of Marcel Proust].

Marcel Proust is one of the greatest French writers of the XX century and of all times. In bis supreme work 'In Search of lost Time", Proust demonstrated a great knowledge of medicine and specifically neurology. He ivas surrounded by doctors in his family and himself carne in touch with many brilliant neurologists as Babinski and Sollier due to bis asthma, wrongly considered as a manifestation of his "neurasthenia". He used as a literary tool the concept of emotional memory which is the basis of bis work. Nearly a century after Proust began the elaboration of bis masterpiece, this paper reviews important medical aspects of bis life and the influence that medicine had on bis work.