Tag: Jean-Martin Charcot
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Imagined conversation: The day Mitchell and Charcot met
Jack RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, United States “Professor Charcot, allow me to introduce Mr. Thomas who has travelled to Paris from America in hope that you might assist him with a most troubling malady.” Charcot’s dutiful assistant stepped back and gave a transmitting nod. Charcot returned the gesture with an acknowledging nod. “Of course. Mr. Thomas,…
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Psychiatric care at the historical Athens Mental Health Facility
Cherron Payne Farmington, Connecticut, United States Athens Asylum for the Insane, Athens State Hospital Administration Building, Circa late 19th Century to early 20th Century. Ohio University Archives. When I was an undergraduate student at Ohio University in Athens, my friends and I would often hike to an intriguing place called the Ridges, overlooking the picturesque…
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John Hughlings Jackson
JMS Pearce Hull, England Fig 1. John Hughlings Jackson. Selected writings of John Hughlings Jackson: frontispiece. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). “. . . A man among the little band of whom are Aristotle and Newton and Darwin.” -Gustave I. Schorstein (1863-1906), physician at the London Hospital The magnitude…
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Duchenne de Boulogne
JMS Pearce East Yorks, England Fig 1. Duchenne examining facial muscles of expression. [From Mècanisme de la physionomie Humaine (1862)] The eponymous Duchenne muscular dystrophy still provokes a sense of sadness in afflicted families and therapeutic impotence in their medical attendants. Although both Edward Meryon (1852) and Wilhelm Griesinger (1865) published early case reports,…
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Charcot and his “grandes hysteriques”
Perhaps no other physician in history has been associated with more diseases than Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893). He was one of the greatest neurologists of the 19th century, instrumental in developing the systematic neurological examination based on correlating clinical features observed during life with changes found at autopsy. At the Salpêtrière, the large hospital and asylum…
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Neurologica – Disorders of the dream world
Shameemah Abrahams Cape Town A portrait of the pioneering neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who was well-known for characterizing multiple sclerosis and hysteria. The human mind, so capable of creating works of genius like the orchestral sounds of Beethoven’s symphonies, da Vinci’s enigmatic artwork, or the majestic pyramids of Giza, can easily lose itself and spiral…