Theater in Professor Charcot's Galaxy

Abstract

Jean-Martin Charcot, famous professor of the Chair of Clinic for Diseases of the Nervous System at Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, was himself an artist, surrounded by artists, and adored the theater. His close colleague Charles Brown-Séquard was ridiculed by Georges Feydeau in a brief freakish monologue recited by Coquelin Cadet, from the Comédie-Française, concerning his claims to rejuvenate himself and others with animal testicle extracts. His friend and patient Alphonse Daudet had written many novels, short stories, and plays. Léon Daudet, Alphonse Daudet's son (and friend of Jean-Baptiste Charcot, the son of the professor), after having abandoned his medical studies, became a writer whose novel Les morticoles was a cruel satire of the medical profession. Among Charcot's pupils, Alfred Binet, Gilbert Ballet, Édouard Brissaud, and Joseph Babinski were particularly involved in the theater. Gilbert Ballet wrote the foreword to La folie au théâtre (Madness in Theatre) by André de Latour. Édouard Brissaud wrote a satiric play Le chèque (The Check), and Joseph Babinski, under the pseudonym of Olaf, was the coauthor with Palau of the drama Les détraquées (The Deranged Women). However, when all is said and done, perhaps the greatest actor in his entourage was Charcot himself.