Édouard Brissaud, neurologue méconnu et comédien dans l’âme

Abstract

Academy of Medicine, was a distinguished neurologist. He founded the journal Revue Neurologique, and authored a monumental atlas of the human brain and a talented history of popular medical expressions. He was surrounded by a family of artists, musicians and, above all, actors and singers. The best-known were his great-grandfather Jacques-Marie Boutet de Monvel, nicknamed "The Great Monvel ", his great aunt Mademoiselle Mars, and his cousin Marie Dorval--monstres sacrés of the first half of the XIXth century--as well as the Anselme-Baptiste family and the three Nourrit tenors. As a child, Edouard Brissaud frequently took part in family plays. He was spontaneous, facetious, a practical joker and something of a show-off. He wrote a comedy play entitled "Le chèque", in which a medical professor and his student discuss the temporary direction Chair of Nervous System Diseases that Brissaud briefly held between 1893 and 1894, after the death of his mentor Charcot.