Emmery Blin (1863–1930). Un aliéniste d’enfants, pionnier de la psychologie expérimentale et membre de la Société Médico-Psychologique (1889)

Abstract

Emmery Eugène Blin (1863–1930) was born in Paris where he studied medicine at the Paris Medical School. After serving as an extern in hospitals (1887) and then as an intern in the asylums in the former department of Seine (1888), he won first prize in the competitive examination for the administration of Parisian psychiatric hospitals in 1890. That same year, he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in medicine. From December 1890 to September 1891, he was assistant physician at the Evreux asylum before being promoted to assistant physician at the Vaucluse asylum, an establishment created in 1876, and where he would remain until his retirement in 1920. An alumnus of the École des Hautes Études and a member of learned societies (Société médico-psychologique 1889; Société de médecine 1891; Société clinique de médecine mentale 1909), Blin was the first, prior to the Binet and Simon test, to use a questionnaire to differentiate between morons, imbeciles and profound idiots. Together with Théodore Simon he designed a campylogram (1900), and always attributed great importance to the use of the test method in child clinical practice. Following in the footsteps of Itard, Seguin, Bourneville and his colleagues, Blin thus contributed to improving the pedagogical education of retarded children and can be considered the leader of the Perray-Vaucluse school of child psychiatry (Théodore Simon, Maurice Brissot, André Beley). In addition to his medical activities, Blin was introduced to sculpture by Paul Richer (1849–1933) and became a student of Denys Puech (1854–1942); he was a member of the Society of French Artists in the sculpture section (1903). An experienced navigator, he was a member of the crew of one of Jean-Baptiste Charcot's (1867–1936) ships that were christened the “Pourquoi pas?”. The same year that Th. Simon succeeded him at the Vaucluse asylum (1920), Blin was convicted of trafficking in morphine. He died in Paris on March 23, 1930.