Adrien Rist (1841–1923), membre de la Société Médico-Psychologique (1881) et fondateur d’une maison de santé privée à Versailles « La Châtaigneraie » (1889) (Partie I)

Abstract

Professor Edouard Rist (1871–1956), a former president of the Academy of Medicine (1948), wrote an unpublished text entitled “His Memories”. This text allows us to sketch the portrait of his father: Adrien Rist (1841–1923) and to review the professional career of this alienist doctor who always had a deep sense of loyalty and attachment to France and its culture. Coming from a family of surgeons, his grandfather Jean-Louis Rist (1769–1839) was a surgeon of the Grande-Armée like his uncle Côme Damien Rist (1760–1826) and their father Jean Népomucène Sébastien Rist (1725–1798) was too a surgeon in Wissembourg. It was under the July Monarchy that A. Rist (1841–1923) was born in Strasbourg. Raised in a Protestant family, he enrolled at the Military Health Service School in Strasbourg. He left the school after one year to enroll in the medical school of the same city. However, he finished his medical study in Paris. After his externship, he was accepted as an intern on December 26, 1864. Five years later (1869), he was a doctor of medicine and became the first one to make known in France the psychophysical law of Gustav Théodor Fechner (1801–1887), which bridges the gap between psychology and the exact sciences. Then, he returned to Strasbourg where he opened a medical practice and started to prepare for the aggregation in physics at the University of Göttingen (Germany). He stayed there long enough to fall in love with Emma Cornelia Gess (1848–1928), a native of Württemberg, to whom he married on April 5, 1870. Three months after his marriage, the war with Prussia broke out. During the conflict, his wife gave birth in Strasbourg to a boy named Edouard (1871–1956). Thus, his new family life and the Franco-Prussian war and its outcome deterred him from passing the aggregation. But also, A. Rist chooses to leave Alsace so as not to renounce his French nationality. After a brief stay in Le Havre (Normandy), he decided to expatriate to Switzerland. In order to be able to practice in this country, A. Rist passed the examinations in the canton of Vaud where he provided an important memorandum on the legislation of insane persons. In 1867, the Champ de l’Air Hospital for the insane was transferred to the Bois-de-Cery located near Lausanne where six years later (1873) a new hospital called “Asile de Cery” was inaugurated. Authorized to practice in Switzerland, A. Rist became in 1873 the first doctor-director of the Bois-de-Cery. A few years earlier, the first private psychiatric clinic in Romanisch Switzerland opened: La Métairie. In 1877, he became the director of this establishment located not far from the previous one at about forty kilometers away still on the banks of Lake Geneva. Board of Directors of this private establishment composed of a majority of Geneva bankers was able to receive about forty patients of well-to-do condition who came from all over the world. A. Rist lived there with his family and the organization at La Métairie was based on the participation of the insane in the family life of the doctor. A. Rist's children (Edouard, Charles, Elisabeth and Eve) founded the “Children's Society” which aimed to give concerts and theatrical performances to the patients of La Métairie. Also, they contributed when patients ran away. At the Métairie, A. Rist received the visit of Alexandrovitch Herzen (1839–1906) who was a professor of physiology at the medical faculty of Lausanne (1881) and whose father, Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (1812–1870) was the father of Russian populist socialism. However, the separation from his children who were studying in France and the tragic death of his daughter Elisabeth at the age of 17 were two factors that led to his return to France. In 1889, A. Rist and his wife decided to leave La Métairie. Rudolf Friedreich Fetscherin (1829–1892), a former assistant physician at the Waldau (Bern; 1859) succeeded him. A. Rist moved to Versailles near Paris where he opened a nursing home at 11 rue des Deux-Moulins: La Châtaigneraie.