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“Caesar of the Salpêtrière” J.-M. Charcot's impact on Psychological Medicine in the 1880s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

William Parry-Jones
William Parry-Jones*
Affiliation:
Highfield Family and Adolescent Unit, Warneford Hospital, Oxford
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The year 1887 is memorable in medical history for the painting depicting ‘Une leçon du Docteur Charcot à la Salpêtrière’ by André Brouillet (1857–1914), a pupil of Gérôme. Lithographs by Eugene Pirodon of this painting were much reproduced and Sigmund Freud hung a copy in his consulting room. In fact, Freud had travelled from Vienna to Paris, in October 1885, to observe the work of Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière. Charcot's views about hysteria and hypnosis were to have a formative and enduring influence on Freud, who returned home, four and a half months later, as one of Charcot's unqualified admirers and champions. It is timely, exactly a century later, to reflect on Charcot's work and influence, when his career was at its zenith and, in particular, to consider his impact on British psychological medicine.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists , Volume 11 , Issue 5 , May 1987 , pp. 150 - 153
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1987

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