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Bernard Menaut

Portrait of Bernard   Menaut

Dr. Bernard Menaut (6 May 1879, Parentis-en-Born, France ‑1943, Rion-des-Landes, France) was a French physician who worked in Cambodia as Chief of Health Service from 1910 to 1939, trained numerous local doctors and studied Cambodian traditional medecine, as well as serving as personal physician to King Sisowath and to the latter’s son King Sisowath Monivong. 

Fluent in Khmer, Dr. Menaut studied Cambodian history during his spare time, and thanks to encounters with local gru (Khmer traditional healers). At the start of his career, he was roving doctor in Stung Treng province, dispensating free medical care. As head of Service mobile d’hygiene et de prophylaxie du Cambodge from 1918 to 1925, he traveled to various provinces in order to fence off grave pandemics and endemic diseases such as the ​“peste pulmonaire”, cholera (along with Dr. Pannetier), leprosis. Later, he was Inspector of the Phnom Penh Public Health Department, General-Inspector of the Health Services of Indochina, and Director-General of Public Health in Cambodia.

In April 1925, after the murder of French tax collector Felix Bardez (1882, Paris — 1925, Kraang Laev, Cambodia), Menaut was one of the two physicians (with Dr. Marric) allowed to check-up the Cambodian defendants, severely beaten by French police before the trial, and issued a damning medical report.

Two of his novels, penned during and after his stay in Cambodia, have been published posthumously.

Publications:

  • [with H. Baisez] La lèpre au Cambodge, étude critique, Hanoi, Imprimerie d’Extrême-Orient, 1919, 158 p. [C102 at National Library of Cambodia].
  • Notice sur la culture du mûrier et l’élevage des vers à soie au Cambodge, Phnom Penh, 1924 [C138 at National Library of Cambodia].
  • “Étude sur la matière médicale cambodgienne (Préface)”, Bulletin de la Société Médico-Chirurgicale de l’Indochine, Sept. 1930, VI, 9, p. 424 – 425.
  • Matière médicale cambodgienne, Hanoi, Imprimerie d’Extrême-Orient, 1930 [for Paris Colonial Exhibition 1931].
  • Sangrama ou la chute d’Angkor et Java ou le roman inachevé, novels published posthumously: Kailash, 1996.