Jean-Martin Charcot

[9][10] "He married a rich widow, Madame Durvis, in 1864 and had three children, Jeanne, Jean-Paul and Jean-Baptiste, who later became a doctor and a famous polar explorer".

[2][13] Summarizing previous reports and adding his own clinical and pathological observations, Charcot called the disease sclérose en plaques.

The announcement was made simultaneously with Pierre Marie of France (his resident) and Howard Henry Tooth of England.

[22] His interest in hysteria and hypnotism "developed at a time when the general public was fascinated in 'animal magnetism' and 'mesmerization'",[23] which was later revealed to be a method of inducing hypnosis.

[25] Bogousslavsky, Walusinski, and Veyrunes write:Charcot and his school considered the ability to be hypnotized as a clinical feature of hysteria ... For the members of the Salpêtrière School, susceptibility to hypnotism was synonymous with disease, i.e. hysteria, although they later recognized ... that grand hypnotisme (in hysterics) should be differentiated from petit hypnotisme, which corresponded to the hypnosis of ordinary people.

[26] He taught that due to this prejudice these "cases often went unrecognised, even by distinguished doctors"[27] and could occur in such models of masculinity as railway engineers or soldiers.

He also was concerned that the sensationalism hypnosis attracted had robbed it of its scientific interest,[25] and that the quarrel with Bernheim, amplified by Charcot's pupil Georges Gilles de la Tourette, had "damaged" hypnotism.

[30] Distorted views of Charcot as harsh and tyrannical have arisen from some sources that rely on a fanciful autobiographical novel by Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele (1929).

[33] One of Charcot's greatest legacies as a clinician is his contribution to the development of systematic neurological examination, correlating a set of clinical signs with specific lesions.

This was made possible by his pioneering long-term studies of patients, coupled with microscopic and anatomic analysis derived from eventual autopsies.

[35] Charcot is just as famous for his influence on those who had studied with him: Sigmund Freud,[8] Joseph Babinski,[2] Jean Leguirec,[8] Pierre Janet,[8] William James, Pierre Marie, Albert Londe, Charles-Joseph Bouchard,[2] Georges Gilles de la Tourette,[2] Alfred Binet,[8] and Albert Pitres.

This perspective overlooks the fact that Charcot never claimed to be a psychiatrist or to be practising psychiatry, a field that was separately organized from neurology within France's educational and public health systems.

[37] After Charcot's death, the phenomenon of "hysteria" that he had described was no longer recognized as a real neurological condition, but was considered to be an "artifact of suggestion".

The Charcot-Janet school, which formed from the work of Charcot and his student Janet, contributed greatly to knowledge of multiple personality disorders.

[42][43] Charcot claimed to have observed a higher prevalence of diseases with a hereditary component (notably arthritis and neurological disorders) in Jewish communities, where limited numbers combined with longterm endogamy.

[44] When these claims were developed by neurologist Henry Meige, and others, in conjunction with the myth of the Wandering Jew, this was used as support by the apostles of French anti-Semitism, notably the journalist Edouard Drumont.

[56] He figures in Per Olov Enquist's 2004 novel The Book about Blanche and Marie,[57] and in the 2005 novel by Sebastian Faulks, Human Traces,[58] as well as Alasdair Gray's 1992 Poor Things.

[62] In music, the Scottish experimental hip hop group Hector Bizerk wrote the song "Dr. Charcot" for their 2015 album The Waltz Of Modern Psychiatry.

Charcot uses hypnotism to treat hysteria and other abnormal mental conditions. All materials from "Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière " (Jean Martin Charcot, 1878)
The painting " A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière " by Pierre Aristide André Brouillet . This painting shows Charcot demonstrating hypnosis on a " hysterical " Salpêtrière patient, "Blanche" ( Marie "Blanche" Wittmann ), who is supported by Dr. Joseph Babiński (rear) . Note the similarity to the illustration of opisthotonus (tetanus) on the back wall. [ 29 ]