Smallpox or the great pox? Le Curé de village, an ambiguous Balzacian novel

An analysis of the symptoms of multiple characters with a skin disease or a congenital defect and of their morbid nature shows that Le Curé de village, a novel considered edifying in nature, is an ambiguous novel: it reflects the shift from a moral to a medical discourse on smallpox or the great pox at a time when research was still feeling its way and when a whole literature took up the subject through indirect routes.