Vincent Rodilla
Alfara del Patriarca, Spain

During the second half of the nineteenth century, hysteria became a major focus of neurological and psychiatric investigation. Physicians increasingly attempted to understand its sensory, motor, and emotional manifestations as disorders rooted in the nervous system rather than solely as moral failings or psychological disturbances. Among the French clinicians engaged in this effort was Jules Bernard Luys (1828–1897), a prominent neurologist remembered both for his pioneering anatomical research and for his later, more controversial work on hypnotism. Luys made important contributions to the study of the basal ganglia, particularly the thalamic and subthalamic regions. His name remains attached to the subthalamic nucleus, still commonly known as the nucleus of Luys.^1,2

Luys approached hysteria from a neurological perspective. Drawing on contemporary physiological theories, he argued that hysterical symptoms reflected disturbances affecting cerebral and subcortical centers and were therefore subject to identifiable biological laws.^1,3 Hypnosis, in his view, provided an experimental tool through which hysterical symptoms could be induced, modified, or intensified, thereby offering insight into their underlying mechanisms.¹

At the Hôpital de la Charité in Paris, Luys conducted public demonstrations in which hypnotic suggestion was used to cause sensory changes, emotional responses, and motor phenomena in patients diagnosed with hysteria. He interpreted these reactions as evidence of the nervous system’s remarkable susceptibility to suggestion. These sessions attracted not only physicians and medical students but also a wider audience curious about the emerging science of hypnotism. However, many contemporaries remained skeptical, attributing the observed reactions to expectation, suggestion, and theatrical staging rather than to authentic neurological phenomena.^1,4

As a result, the Hôpital de la Charité became one of the Parisian institutions most closely associated with hypnotism and hysteria. Its demonstrations helped popularize hypnotic practices while also fueling ongoing debates about scientific credibility and the boundary between experiment and performance.⁵

Against this background, Georges Moreau de Tours painted Les Fascinés de la Charité in 1890 (Figure 1). The work portrays a hypnotic session attended by both patients and physicians. Luys appears among the observers standing at the back of the room and is depicted as the tallest figure in the composition. Near the center stands one of the instruments associated with his experiments: a spindle fitted with rotating mirrors that reflected flickering light from a nearby lamp onto the patients. Luys believed that this form of visual stimulation could trigger emotional reactions or hysterical manifestations in predisposed individuals.⁶ A chart illustrating the stages of hypnosis hangs prominently on the wall, emphasizing the scientific setting in which the scene unfolds.

Yet the painting is far more than a visual record of a clinical exercise. Moreau was not simply interested in documenting a particular experiment. Instead, he constructed a scene centered on fascination itself. The title provides an important clue. The fascinés are not presented primarily as patients suffering from hysteria but as individuals absorbed in an altered state of attention, suspended between consciousness and suggestion. Each figure seems enclosed within a private mental world, detached from ordinary experience and resistant to straightforward explanation.

Moreau de Tours occupied a unique position from which to explore such themes. As a son of the psychiatrist Jacques-Joseph Moreau and brother of the psychiatrist Paul Moreau de Tours, he grew up in an environment deeply engaged with questions of mental illness and consciousness. Although he was not formally connected to the Charité, he was well acquainted with contemporary debates concerning nervous disorders, trance states, and the limits of psychiatric knowledge. His artistic outlook also reflected broader Symbolist interests in dreams, hallucinations, and the more elusive dimensions of subjective experience.

Seen in this context, Les Fascinés de la Charité occupies a singular place within the visual culture of nineteenth-century medicine. Rather than serving merely as a documentary image, it invites reflection on the ways medical authority generates meaning and transforms patients into objects of observation. While physicians sought to categorize and explain hysteria, Moreau appears more interested in preserving its ambiguity and mystery.

The arrangement of the figures reinforces this tension. Patients sit or stand in similar poses, their expressions subdued and their attention seemingly directed inward. Individual identity is largely subordinated to the collective experience of fascination. On one level, this uniformity echoes contemporary medical claims that hypnotic phenomena were regular, predictable, and reproducible. On another, it raises the possibility that suggestion, expectation, and institutional discipline shaped these responses.

Questions of power are equally central to the painting. Luys is not shown actively directing the patients, yet his authority permeates the entire composition. Influence is communicated through position and structure rather than explicit action. The patients orient themselves toward a largely implicit focal point of authority. The division between observers and observed, doctors and patients, becomes one of the image’s defining elements. In this respect, Moreau’s work echoes contemporary criticisms that the hypnotic phenomena displayed at the Charité were inseparable from the physician’s authority and the performative framework in which they occurred.

The contrast with André Brouillet’s famous A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière is striking (Figure 2).

Brouillet’s painting celebrates medical observation and projects confidence in scientific progress. Moreau’s work is less certain and considerably more ambiguous. There is little suggestion of diagnosis, treatment, or therapeutic success. Instead, the viewer encounters a group of individuals suspended in a shared state of trance. The atmosphere is thoughtful and somewhat unsettling. Medicine appears not only as a means of acquiring knowledge but also as a force capable of shaping the very phenomena it seeks to investigate.

For this reason, Les Fascinés de la Charité may be viewed as a subtle reflection on the ambitions and limitations of medical modernity. At a time when hypnosis was increasingly presented as an experimental science, Moreau drew attention to the unresolved relationship between scientific authority, spectacle, and human subjectivity. Rather than reducing hysteria to a purely neurological phenomenon, he portrayed it as something that remained elusive, occupying the uncertain territory between illness, suggestion, and human experience.

Today, the work remains a valuable historical document. It captures a period in which neurologists and psychiatrists attempted to understand the mysteries of hysteria through experimental methods, while artists explored many of the same questions through visual representation. By depicting Luys’s clinic, Moreau preserved not only a controversial chapter in the history of medicine but also a vivid reflection on the authority of science and the enduring complexity of the human mind.

References

1. Parent A, Parent M, Leroux-Hugon V. Jules Bernard Luys: a singular figure of 19th century neurology. Can J Neurol Sci. 2002;29(3):282-288. doi:10.1017/S0317167100002080
2. Pearce JM. The subthalamic nucleus and Jules Bernard Luys (1828-97). J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2001;71(6):783. doi:10.1136/jnnp.71.6.783
3. Meira AT, Prodóssimo AF, Froehner GS, et al. Jules Bernard Luys: From a description of the subthalamic nucleus to hypnotism. Arq Neuropsiquiatr. 2020;78(12):811-814. doi:10.1590/0004-282X20200116
4. Oppenheim J. “Shattered Nerves”: Doctors, Patients, and Depression in Victorian England. Oxford University Press; 1991. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195057812.001.0001
5. Micale MS. Approaching Hysteria: Disease and Its Interpretations. Princeton University Press; 2019.
6. Muhr P. Visualising the hypnotised brain: Hysteria research from Charcot to functional brain scans. Culture Unbound. 2018;10(1):65-82. doi:10.3384/cu.2000.1525.181065