Illustration from “Lectures” of a patient in a ‘hystero-epileptic attack.’
Jean-Martin Charcot, head of the medical staff at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, France, was a popular figure in late nineteenth century France. He was famous beyond French borders and part of his fame stemmed from the Leçons sur les maladies du système nerveaux, faites à la Salpêtrière, translated into English by Doctor George Sigerson as Lessons on the Diseases of the Nervous System and published in three volumes starting in 1877. (Check out Volume Two and Three!)
Charcot was a firm believer that mental symptoms had a physical lesion at their source. He and his staff performed detailed physical work-ups on their patients pre- and post-mortem and tried to trace each mental symptom back to a particular bit of physical damage to the brain, nerves, or spine.
Charcot’s lectures were a regular feature of life at the Salpêtrière for the medical staff, patients, and the hordes of visitors who flocked to see Charcot exhibit his ‘lunatics.’ Patients with particularly theatrical symptoms — such as Blanche Wittman, Augustine, and Genevieve whose stories are told in more detail by Asti Hustvedt in Medical Muses — were drawn from the wards precisely in order to demonstrate their symptoms as a piece of theatre for fascinated crowds. Charcot exhibited his control — or lack thereof — over the female patients by calling upon them to reach a particular seizure point or a specific contortion of the hand, leg, or body for the edification of the staff and audience.
The lectures were such a success that the published editions were inevitable and popular once they were produced. As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!