The Poisoning of Plague Patients in Jaffa was a May 1799 episode during Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign, later recalled in a discussion of medical duty and the preservation of life. It turned on a sharp distinction between a commander’s demand to end suffering and a physician’s refusal to treat patients’ deaths as a medical solution. Although the patients were ultimately given poison, some survived and were protected by the advancing Turkish troops.

The request at Jaffa

In May 1799, plague struck Napoleon’s troops at Jaffa. Napoleon told the army’s chief medical officer, René-Nicolas Dufriche Desgenettes, that a doctor should end the patients’ suffering and remove the danger they posed to the army. He proposed an overdose of opium and said he would want the same treatment if he were in their position.

Desgenettes rejected the proposal. His refusal rested both on principle and on the fact that some patients might recover. In his account, the physician’s obligation was to preserve life, even when patients appeared close to death and the military circumstances made their care difficult.

The retreat and the order

Less than two weeks later, Turkish troops closed in on the French position. Napoleon ordered that patients in the hospital who were too weak to join the retreat be poisoned with laudanum, a tincture of opium. Desgenettes again refused to carry out the order. The chief pharmacist administered the poison instead.

Survivors and ethical significance

The dose proved insufficient: several patients were still alive when Turkish troops entered the hospital, and the troops protected them. The episode therefore did not end with the intended abandonment of patients who could not travel; it also exposed the limits of command over medical action, as the chief physician’s refusal separated his professional judgment from Napoleon’s order.

The book invokes Jaffa as a historical test of the claim that extreme circumstances can justify hastening death. Desgenettes’s refusal, grounded in both principle and the possibility of survival, makes preservation of life the central counterweight to arguments based on suffering or military necessity.