Psychiatrie et ordre public, de l’Ancien Régime à la Restauration. L’exemple parisien

Abstract

In the discussions relative to the vote of the 1838 law, the Minister of the Interior emphasized that “to dispose of furious and insane persons” and to make society “safe from the excesses of a delirious head” is more than a right for a government, “it is one of its most imperious duties” which has been conferred to it “from time immemorial”. As a matter of fact, for more than a hundred and fifty years, the public authority had had at its disposal the means to respond to emergency situations and to public disorders caused by insane persons. Under the Ancien Regime it was the Lieutenant General of Police, guarantor of order in all matters, who had the power of ordering their immediate legal admission in an institution, so as to be “taken care of and medicated until perfect recovery”. At the beginning of the Revolution, the abolition of sales of public offices, the suppression of the jurisdiction of the Châtelet, the abolition of “lettres de cachet” opened up a rather confused decade as witnessed by the archives of the General Police. However, the successive administrations will dispose of the police laws of 1790 and 1791 relative to the “insane and furious” and to the “regrettable events” they could cause. The Consulate marks a decisive step with the establishment of the prefectoral administration, the adoption of the Civil Code, the creation of the General Council of Hospices with its Central Bureau, and with the reform of the establishments: The closing of the Hôtel-Dieu rooms, the reform of the Charenton Institution and the installation of treatment services at La Salpêtrière then at Bicêtre. The Police Headquarters, a Parisian specificity, will thus dispose of the means to isolate the insane who cause public disorders or who threaten public safety and to impose their admission, upon medical advice, into “hospitals established for the treatment of madness”.