Achille-Louis Foville

[1] Foville was born in Pontoise, France and received his medical doctorate in 1824, after studying medicine under Léon Louis Rostan and Jean Étienne Dominique Esquirol at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital.

His medical thesis argued mental illness may be curable, discussing some treatments of the day and their apparent effectiveness.

Until the appointment Thomas Hodgkin had been attempting to open a facility for the treatment of mental illnesses to compete with the York Retreat.

With Foville's appointment to Charenton, he was no longer willing to relocate to England, and Hodgkin dropped the project, feeling no other doctors were suitable to run the facility.

[2] The French Revolution of 1848 cost him his job at Charenton, and Foville took up private practice in Paris.