Jean-Martin Charcot

Jean-Martin Charcot
Born	(1825-11-29)November 29, 1825 Paris, France
Died	(1893-08-16)August 16, 1893 Lac des Settons, Nièvre
Nationality	French
Scientific career
Fields	Neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology
Institutions	Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital

Jean-Martin Charcot (29 November 1825 – 16 August 1893) was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He is known as "the founder of modern neurology" and is "associated with at least 15 medical eponyms", including Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). His work greatly influenced the developing fields of neurology and psychology. He was the "foremost neurologist of late nineteenth-century France" and has been called "the Napoleon of the neuroses".

Life

Born in Paris, France, Charcot worked and taught at the famous Salpêtrière Hospital for 33 years. His reputation as an instructor drew students from all over Europe. In 1882, he established a neurology clinic at Salpêtrière, which was the first of its kind in Europe.

Charcot's primary focus was neurology. He named and was the first to describe multiple sclerosis. He was also the first to describe a disorder known as Charcot joint or Charcot arthropathy, a degeneration of joint surfaces resulting from loss of proprioception. He researched the functions of different parts of the brain and the role of arteries in cerebral hemorrhage.

Charcot was among the first to describe Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). The announcement was made simultaneously with Pierre Marie of France (his resident) and Howard Henry Tooth of England. The disease is also sometimes called peroneal muscular atrophy.

In 1861 and 1862, Charcot, with Alfred Vulpian, added more symptoms to James Parkinson's clinical description and then subsequently attached the name Parkinson's disease to the syndrome.

Charcot's most enduring work was on hypnosis and hysteria. He believed that hysteria was a neurological disorder caused by hereditary problems in the nervous system. He used hypnosis to induce a state of hysteria in patients and studied the results, and was single-handedly responsible for changing the French medical community's opinion about the validity of hypnosis (it was previously rejected as Mesmerism).

Charcot's works about hypnosis and his public demonstrations of "hypnotized" persons in an auditorium were sharply criticized by Hippolyte Bernheim, a leading neurologist of the time, and by Charcot's former scientific assistant Axel Munthe in his famous memoirs The Story of San Michele.

Eponyms

Charcot (left) demonstrates hypnosis on a "hysterical" Salpêtrière patient, "Blanche" (Marie Wittman), who is supported by Dr. Joseph Babiński (rear).

Charcot's name is associated with many diseases and conditions including:

• Charcot's artery (lenticulostriate artery)
• Charcot's joint (diabetic arthropathy)
• Charcot's disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease)
• Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (peroneal muscular atrophy)
• Charcot Wilbrand syndrome (visual agnosia and loss of ability to revisualise images)
• Charcot's intermittent hepatic fever (intermittent pain, intermittent fever, intermittent jaundice, and loss of weight)
• Charcot-Bouchard aneurysms (tiny aneurysms of the penetrating branches of middle cerebral artery in hypertensives)
• Charcot's triad
• Charcot Arthropathy

Also, Charcot Island in Antarctica was named in his honor by his son, Jean-Baptiste Charcot.

Legacy

Charcot is just as famous for his students: Sigmund Freud, Joseph Babinski, Pierre Janet, William James, Pierre Marie, Albert Londe, Charles-Joseph Bouchard, Georges Gilles de la Tourette, Axel Munthe, and Alfred Binet. Charcot bestowed the eponym for Tourette syndrome in honor of his student, Georges Gilles de la Tourette.

Charcot appears, along with Maria Skłodowska-Curie (Madame Curie) and Charcot's patient "Blanche" (Marie Wittman), in Per Olov Enquist's 2004 novel The Book about Blanche and Marie (English translation, 2006, ISBN 1-58567-668-3). He also appears in the 2005 novel by Sebastian Faulks, Human Traces, and in Axel Munthe's 1929 memoir The Story of San Michele. In a letter to the New York Times Book Review of January 18, 1931, however, Charcot's son wrote that 'Dr Munthe never was trained by my father'. And in his 2008 biography of Munthe (ISBN 978-1-84511-720-7), Bengt Jangfeldt says that 'Charcot is not mentioned in a single letter of Axel's out of the hundreds that have been preserved from his Paris years.'

References

• Kushner, HI. A cursing brain?: The histories of Tourette syndrome. Harvard University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-674-00386-1

Further reading

• Bernheim, Hippolyte: Hypnotisme et suggestion: Doctrine de la Salpêtrière et doctrine de Nancy. -in: Le Temps, 29 January 1891.
• Carrez, Jean-Pierre: Femmes opprimées à la Salpêtrière. Paris, 2005.
• Gauchet, Marcel; Swain, Gladys: Le vrai Charcot: les chemins imprévus de l’inconscient. Paris, 1997.
• Georges Didi-Huberman: Die Erfindung der Hysterie. Die photographische Klinik von Jean-Martin Charcot. Paderborn: Fink 1997. ISBN 3-7705-3148-5 (frz. Erstausgabe 1982)
• Goetz CG, Bonduelle M, and Gelfand T (1995): Charcot: Constructing Neurology. New York, Oxford University Press.
• Guillain G (1959): J.-M. Charcot (1825-1893): His Life - His Work. (Bailey P trans.). New York, Paul B. Hoeber.
• Thuillier, Jean: Monsieur Charcot de la Salpêtrière. Paris, 1993.
• Werner Brück: Erotisierte Darstellungen hysteroepileptischer Frauen. Norderstedt, 2008. ISBN 3-8370-6917-6

External links

• Biography and bibliography in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

• Charcot lectures on diseases of the brain and nervous system