"Caesar of the SalpÃatrià ̈re" J.-M. Charcot's impact on Psychological Medicine in the 1880s

appointed Professor of Pathological Anatomy in the Faculty of Medicine and, in 1882,he was the recipient of a specially created Chair of Clinical Studies of Diseases of the Nervous System. This was in recognition of the fact that, by dint of incessant toil and meticulous clinical scrutiny of neurological cases, he had established neurology as an independent discipline. In the 1880s.his fame for research, teaching and clinical demonstrations, especially of hysteri cal patients, brought medical disciples, as well as patients, flocking to the SalpÃatrià ̈re from all over the world. His earlier clinical work covered a variety of medical topics such as chronic rheumatism and the diseases of old age, but the abundance and nature of the clinical material allocated to him at the SalpÃatrià ̈re l d Charcot inevitably to focus on neurology, neuropathology and patients suffering from epilepsy, hysteria and hystero-epilepsy (la grande hystérie). In the last 15years of his life, he became deeply interested in the controversial and ill-famed phenomenon of hypnotism, an unusual and professionally risky step, at this time, for an eminent physician. This was a period of gradual recrud escence of interest in hypnotism, after it had fallen into disfavour for two decades and had become coloured by charlatanism. Charles Richet, a Paris physiologist, contri buted to the revival with a study published in 1875entitled Du somnambulisme provoqué. Charcot's interest began in