Maxime Durand-Fardel (1815–1899), auteur du premier mémoire sur le suicide de l’enfant, paru dans les Annales Médico-Psychologiques en 1855

Abstract

Since its creation in 1843, the Annales Médico-Psychologiques has reported on works or studies about insanity under different headings: memoirs, bibliography, French and foreign journals, and minutes of meetings of learned societies. In its second issue, the Annales Médico-Psychologiques reported on the first work on cerebral anatomical pathology by Charles Louis-Maxime Durand-Fardel (1815–1899). In 1845, it pointed out his Traité du ramollissement du cerveau (1843) and published one of his observations about a case of hypochondria (1852). Maxime Durand-Fardel was an extern in medicine (1834), then an intern (1836) and a Doctor of Medicine (1840). The same year he became a Doctor of Medicine, he was the first to describe a case of cholangiocarcinoma. He was a pioneer in vascular neurology; he described for the first time the “cribrosum status” following a chronic compromise of cerebral circulation (1842). For four years, Durand-Fardel worked as a country doctor practicing general medicine and minor surgery in Châtillon-sur-Loing (Loiret). In 1848, he published a series of original works on medical hydrology. He founded the Society of Hydrology and Medical Climatology (1853) and taught at the École pratique de la Faculté de médecine de Paris, where he taught a course on mineral waters and chronic diseases (1856–1876). In 1854, he was a member of a number of learned societies (The Anatomical Society, the Medical Observation Society, the Medical Society of Paris, the Medical-surgical Society of Paris, the Medical Society of the 10th Arrondissement of Paris, the Societies of Medical Sciences of Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Nancy, Leipzick and a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Medicine) and worked as a medical inspector of the springs of Hauterive in Vichy (Allier). In the same year, he published his Traité clinique et pratique des maladies des vieillards (A Clinical and Practical Treatise on Diseases of the Elderly), following in the footsteps of the great clinicians of the nineteenth century who devoted scientific work to senile pathology (Canstatt, Pinel, Prus, Rostan). He was an erudite doctor, musician and watercolorist, and he was interested in the study of history and the Italian language, becoming fascinated by Dante Alighieri. He translated and commented the Divine Comedy. On March 19, 1899, Durand-Fardel died in Paris. In addition to having a predilection for anatomical-pathological studies and medical hydrology, Durand-Fardel was the first to publish, in France and abroad, a memoir in the Annales Médico-Psychologiques dealing with suicide in children in 1855. The publication of this monograph marks the groundbreaking role played by the Annales Médico-Psychologiques, a pioneering French journal of psychiatry founded in 1843 and the official bulletin of the Société Médico-Psychologique since 1852, in the emergence of a discipline – infant and juvenile psychiatry – which would not see the light of day until 1842.