In the Land of PainBy: Alphonse Daudet Alphonse Daudet was a highly popular nineteenth century French novelist, whose work radiated humour and good cheer. Few knew that for his entire adult life he suffered from syphilis, a disease both unmentionable and incurable at the time. What even fewer realised was that he kept an intimate notebook in which he recorded the development and terrifying effects of the disease. Describing a life in pain, and the sometimes alarming