Crime , Hysteria and Belle

Hysteria and hypnotism became a favorite topic of studies in the fin de siècle neurology that emerged from the school organized at La Salpêtrière by Jean-Martin Charcot, where he had arrived in 1861. Georges Gilles de la Tourette started working with Charcot in 1884 and probably remained his most faithful student, even after his mentor’s death in 1893. This collaboration was particularly intense on ‘criminal hypnotism’, an issue on which Hippolyte Bernheim and his colleagues from the Nancy School challenged the positions taken by the Salpêtrière School. Bernheim claimed that hypnotism was not a diagnostic feature of hysteria and that there were real-life examples of murders suggested under hypnosis, while hypnosis susceptibility was identified with hysteria by Charcot and Gilles de la Tourette, who saw rape as the only crime associated with hypnotism. The quarrel was particularly virulent during a series of famous criminal cases which took place between 1888 and 1890. At the time, it was considered that La Salpêtrière had succeeded over Nancy, since the role of hypnotism was discarded during these famous trials. However, the theories of Charcot and Gilles de la Tourette were also damaged by the fight, which probably triggered the conceptual evolution leading to JoReceived: March 25, 2009 Accepted: May 6, 2009 Published online: July 11, 2009 Julien Bogousslavsky Department of Neurology and Neurorehabilitation, Clinique Valmont Genolier Swiss Medical Network CH–1823 Glion/Montreux (Switzerland) Tel. +41 21 962 3701, Fax +41 21 962 3838, E-Mail [email protected] © 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel 0014–3022/09/0624–0193$26.00/0 Accessible online at: www.karger.com/ene Bogousslavsky /Walusinski /Veyrunes Eur Neurol 2009;62:193–199 194 Gilles de la Tourette belonged to the group of students closest to Charcot. He started work with Charcot in 1884 as an intern, advancing to chef de clinique in 1887 and became Charcot’s personal secretary in 1892 ( fig. 1 ). While Gilles de la Tourette is now specifically associated with the disease that bears his name, at the time his most recognized activity was clearly in the management of hysterics and hypnotism [2] . Hysteria and Hypnotism in Charcot’s Circle In neurology, the second half of the nineteenth century was dominated by the study of two diseases, tabes and hysteria. Probably resulting from the suggestion of his intern Désiré-Magloire Bourneville [3] , Charcot’s interest in hysteria developed mainly after 1870 when he took charge of the Delasiauve service, a place where mainly epileptics and hysterics were admitted [4] . This interest also developed at a time when the general public was fascinated in ‘animal magnetism’ and ‘mesmerization’ ( fig. 2 ). This fascination often led to occult practices and charlatanism, which had gained a considerable foothold after the studies of Franz Anton Mesmer at the end of the eighteenth century. The medical field also had its share of distortion, as shown by the experiments of Jules Bernard Luys [5] , when they became used by his chef de clinique, Gérard Encausse (also known as ‘mage Papus’ ), in parallel, and successfully, for occult practices in secret societies. Charcot considered hysteria as a ‘neurosis’ with an organic basis, but with no demonstrable cerebral damage and where a ‘dynamic lesion’ of the brain was responsible for the ‘stigmata’ (sensory dysfunction, hyperexcitability, visual field narrowing), i.e. permanent clinical features in patients who were also prone to paroxysmal fits ( grandes crises d’hystérie ) [6] . The ‘dynamic lesion’ was emphasized by Charcot in order to explain the organicity of hysteria in the absence of a morphological lesion. However, Charcot’s views on hysteria evolved over time, frequently in contradictory ways [7] . Shortly before his death in 1893, he started to introduce psychological conFig. 1. Jean-Martin Charcot and Georges Gilles de la Tourette. Fig. 2. Sketch of Jean-Martin Charcot at the time when hypnotic suggestion and ‘mesmerization’ were becoming highly popular in the public. C o lo r v er si o n av ai la b le o n lin e