Neurology to treat hysteria and other abnormal mental conditions. All materials from
Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière (Jean Martin Charcot, 1878) Charcot's primary focus was neurology. He named and was the first to describe
multiple sclerosis. Summarizing previous reports and adding his own clinical and pathological observations, Charcot called the disease
sclérose en plaques. The three signs of multiple sclerosis now known as
Charcot's triad 1 are
nystagmus,
intention tremor, and
telegraphic speech, though these are not unique to MS. Charcot also observed cognition changes, describing his patients as having a "marked enfeeblement of the memory" and "conceptions that formed slowly". 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's studies between 1868 and 1881 were a landmark in the understanding of
Parkinson's disease. He also noted apparent variations on PD, such as
Parkinson's disease with hyperextension. Charcot received the first European professional chair of clinical diseases for the nervous system in 1882.
Studies on hypnosis and hysteria Charcot is best known today for his work on
hypnosis and
hysteria. In particular, he is best remembered for his work with his hysteria patient
Louise Augustine Gleizes, who somewhat increased his fame during his lifetime; however,
Marie "Blanche" Wittmann, known as the Queen of Hysterics, was his most famous hysteria patient at the time. but near the end of his life he concluded that hysteria was a psychological disease. Charcot first began studying hysteria after creating a special ward for non-insane females with "hystero-epilepsy". He discovered two distinct forms of hysteria among these women: minor hysteria and major hysteria. His interest in hysteria and hypnotism "developed at a time when the general public was fascinated in 'animal magnetism' and 'mesmerization, His study of hysteria "attract[ed] both scientific and social notoriety". 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.Charcot argued vehemently against the widespread medical and popular prejudice that hysteria was rarely found in men, presenting several cases of traumatic male hysteria. He taught that due to this prejudice these "cases often went unrecognised, even by distinguished doctors" and could occur in such models of masculinity as railway engineers or soldiers. Charcot's analysis, in particular his view of hysteria as an organic condition which could be caused by trauma, paved the way for understanding neurological symptoms arising from industrial-accident or war-related traumas.
The Salpêtrière School's position on hypnosis was sharply criticized by
Hippolyte Bernheim, another leading neurologist of the time. Charcot thought of art as a crucial tool of the clinicoanatomic method. He used photos and drawings, many made by himself or his students, in his classes and conferences. He also drew outside the neurology domain, as a personal hobby. Like Duchenne, he is considered a key figure in the incorporation of photography to the study of neurological cases.
Distorted views of Charcot 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). Munthe claimed to have been Charcot's assistant, but in fact, Munthe was just a medical student among hundreds of others. Munthe's most direct contact with Charcot was when Munthe helped a young female patient "escape" from a ward of the hospital and took her into his home. Charcot threatened to report this to the police, and ordered that Munthe not be allowed on the wards of the hospital again. In a 1931 letter to
The New York Times Book Review, Charcot's son
Jean-Baptiste Charcot, who had, himself, been a formal student of his father at the Salpêtrière, emphatically stated: "I can certify that Dr Munthe never was trained by my father"; and, further, that "[although Munthe] may have [incidentally] followed, like hundreds of others, some courses of Charcot, ...he was not trained by him and certainly never had the intimacy of which he boasts [in his recently reviewed work,
Memories and Vagaries]. ...I was, myself, a student at the Salpetriere then, and can certify that he was not one of his students and that my father never knew him. Everything he says about professor Charcot is false...." Bengt Jangfeldt, in his 2008 biography,
Axel Munthe: The Road to San Michele, states that "Charcot is not mentioned in a single letter of Axel's out of the hundreds that have been preserved from his Paris years" (p. 96). == Legacy ==