The Alienism and the Anatomoclinical Mentality: the Work of J.E.D Esquirol

Authors

  • Rafael Huertas Department of History of Science, Center for Historical Studies CSIC, Madrid, ES

Keywords:

History of Psychiatry, Semiology , 19th Century , France

Abstract

This Article tries to analyze the influence that the anatomoclinical mentality exercised on the French alienism of the first half of the 19th Century, using the work of J.E.D. Esquirol (1722-1840) as the main source of information. In order to succeed this analysis will be based on the importance granted to the discovery of the anatomical lesion and the role that autopsies played in the reflections conserning the etiology and the self-same nature of maddnes. Furthermore, it will be analysed the origins of a psychiatric semiology, based on anatomical formas, with regard to the differentiation established between hallucinations and illusions, both considered as symptoms with psychical signs values and not as causes of madness.     

Downloads

Published

1996-11-01

Issue

Section

Articles