Moreau De Tours Research Articles

That men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains: Reconsidering the origins of model psychosis

The promises of the Prozac century have fallen short; the number of novel, therapeutically significant medications successfully completing development shrinks every year; and the demand for better treatments constantly grows. Answering these hardships is a renewed optimism concerning the efficacy of controlled psychedelic therapy, a renaissance that has seen the resurgence of a familiar concept: intoxication as model psychosis. And yet, little has been made of where this peculiar idea originates. Why did we come to liken psychosis to intoxication, and why is this an idea we find so hard to shake? Questioning the conventional narrative that identifies the concept as emerging in the mid 19th century, this article seeks to uncover the conceptual foundations underlying what is now intended by ‘model psychosis’. This investigation begins with an assessment of both Moreau de Tours’s concept of hashish madness in 1845 and Emil Kraepelin’s study of artificial insanity in the 1880s–90s. In seeking to contextualize these ideas, this article further considers the deeper historical association between intoxication and psychosis, instead proposing that intoxication represents an originary conception of madness. Bringing this examination into the 19th century, it becomes apparent that perceptions of intoxicants, and intoxication, were immanently participatory in the emerging understanding of psychosis. The contemporary understanding of model psychosis comes into focus when these elements coalesce with the advent of psychological modelling. Ultimately, the goal is not merely to understand how and why model psychosis became thinkable, but to examine how overlooked concepts have engendered new ways of being neuro-psychiatric subjects.

Les biographies de psychiatres

The biographies of psychiatrists have been in the 19th century panegyrics, pronounced during the funeral or necrologies evoking the career and the publications of the deceased. The successive secretaries of the medico-psychological society, Auguste Motet and then Antoine Ritti, have written many texts with accurate information on the life and works of the first French alienists. They have been gathered in books, published in 1894 and in 1913–1914. The specialist of the psychiatric biography at the beginning of the 20th century is René Sémelaigne (1855–1934), descendant of the Pinel family by his mother. He has written a reference book during half a century: The pioneers of the French psychiatry before and after Pinel (2 tomes, 1930 and 1932), including notices about 97 personalities from the 16th to the 20th century (22 before Pinel, 75 after). They were physicians, alienists or specialists of internal medicine having contributed to the clinic of neurosis. A detailed bibliography (books and articles), almost exhaustive, of each author is presented in annex of his notice. The chapters are rather hagiographic. The texts are based on the quest for forerunners and the positivist illusion of uninterrupted progress. Psychiatric journals have published in 1950 and in 1973 some issues with articles on the life and works of famous alienists. After Michel Foucault's Histoire de la Folie (1961), the biographies are more critical. The suicides of Clérambault and more recently of Marcé are clearly related. The Biographic Dictionary of Pierre Morel (1984) include about 270 notices (350 in the edition of 1996) of French and foreign personalities, not only physicians, but also psychoanalysts, philanthropists and patients. For the first time, women are present in a psychiatric dictionary. Like Kraepelin, some psychiatrists have written theirs memoirs at the end of the 20th century (Baruk, Debray-Ritzen). Others have answered in the journal International Psychiatry (1993) to the questionnaire: why have you chosen the psychiatry? In the 1990s, several books have been written on the life of alienists and psychiatrists that have marked their time, either by physicians (Marcé, Dide, Heuyer, Ey), or by historians (Pinel, Toulouse, Clérambault). For others, it is a collective book by several contributors (Esquirol, Moreau de Tours, Minkowski, Delay). Personalities belonging to neurology and psychiatry have also inspired biographies (Bourneville, Alzheimer, Gilles de la Tourette). Since 2004, a Biographical dictionary, initiated by Joseph Biéder, is published in the issues of the Annales Médico-Psychologiques, the most ancient French psychiatric journal, created in 1843. In 2020, it includes 86 notices, written by 16 contributors. The personalities are alienists, psychiatrists, neuropsychiatrics and physicians interested by the psychiatry during the 19th and the 20th centuries. The evolution of the biography from the panegyric to the critical contribution, for example in the case of Clérambault, question about its function and about the relationship between the works of an author and his life.

Moreau de Tours: organicism and subjectivity. Part 2: Moreau as psychopathologist.

These two articles analyse the importance of J.J. Moreau de Tours' work and its influence on the development of descriptive psychopathology from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The first article focused on biographical aspects and presented Moreau's main works in their social and cultural contexts. This second article critically analyses Moreau's contributions from different perspectives: epistemological, psychopathological, clinical, therapeutic, and it also discusses his role as a public figure.

Moreau de Tours: organicism and subjectivity. Part 1: Life and work.

This is the first of two articles analysing the importance of J.J. Moreau de Tours' work and its influence on the development of descriptive psychopathology from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Part 1 focuses on biographical aspects and presents Moreau's main works in their social and cultural context, with special emphasis on his book Du Hachisch et de l'Aliénation mentale, published in 1845. The second article will concentrate on Moreau as a psychopathologist.

History of cannabis and the endocannabinoid system .

This article retraces the story of cannabis from the earliest contacts of humans with the plant to its subsequent global expansion, its medicinal uses, and the discovery of the endocannabinoid system in the 20th century. Cannabis was attested to around 12 000 years ago near the Altai Mountains in Central Asia, and since then, cannabis seeds have accompanied the migration of nomadic peoples. Records of the medicinal use of cannabis appear before the Common Era in China, Egypt, and Greece (Herodotus), and later in the Roman empire (Pliny the Elder, Dioscorides, Galen). In the 19th century, orientalists like Silvestre de Sacy, and Western physicians coming into contact with Muslim and Indian cultures, like O’Shaughnessy and Moreau de Tours, introduced the medicinal use of cannabis into Europe. The structure of the main psychoactive phytocannabinoid, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), was determined in Israel by Mechoulam and Gaoni in 1964. This discovery opened the gate for many of the subsequent developments in the field of endocannabinoid system (ECS) research. The advances in the scientific knowledge of the ECS place the debate on cannabis liberalization in a new context.

The concepts of heredity and degeneration in the work of Jean-Martin Charcot

ABSTRACT Transcripts of the Tuesday Lessons at La Salpêtrière Hospital show that Jean-Martin Charcot often asked his patients about their family history. The information gathered on patients’ heredity played also a significant role in the diagnostic reasoning he instructed his students in. Again and again, he included in his teachings the concept of degeneration to suggest an etiology for observed pathologies. This article analyzes the origin of Charcot’s knowledge, imparted in the Tuesday Lessons, by examining the theories of heredity and degeneration successively developed by Prosper Lucas (1808–1885) in 1847, Bénédict-Auguste Morel (1809–1873) in 1857, and Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours (1804–1884) in 1859. I will review examples taken from the Tuesday Lessons to illustrate how Charcot assimilated the ideas of these alienists. Two of his students, Charles Féré (1852–1907) and Georges Gilles de la Tourette (1857–1904), known for championing their master’s work, went on to publish their own books that developed theories of heredity and degeneration. I will conclude my review, which aims to examine a little known facet of Charcot’s work, with a few examples from these authors’ writings.

Quand une paralysie générale débutante était considérée comme un facteur de créativité. L’exemple de Gaetano Donizetti

According to J.J. Moreau de Tours (1859) and some late 19th century clinicians, General Paralysis, during its prodromal period, could confer exceptional creativity and this idea had become popular in the literary world. Its validity is examined based on the example, chosen by Moreau de Tours, of his patient, the composer Gaetano Donizetti. However, there is no available evidence to support the hypothesis that any pathological condition (whether neurological or psychiatric) may have contributed to the composer's creativity. The presumed notion of “prodromic period” appears central; it was closely linked to the constitutional and then hereditary-degenerative conception of General Paralysis.

The Pharmakon: Concept Figure, Image of Transgression, Poetic Practice ed. by Hermann Herlinghaus

Reviewed by: The Pharmakon: Concept Figure, Image of Transgression, Poetic Practice ed. by Hermann Herlinghaus Laurence M. V. Totelin Hermann Herlinghaus, ed. The Pharmakon: Concept Figure, Image of Transgression, Poetic Practice. Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter, 2018. viii + 392 pp. €38.00 (978-3-8253-6740-4). The ancient Greek word pharmakon has three main meanings: that of healing drug, that of poison, and that of magic potion. Since the third meaning is relatively close to that of "poison," one can say, together with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, that pharmakon is a dipole concept. Its two poles, however, cannot be construed simply in terms of bad and good; the Greeks did not conceive of the pharmakon in a moralizing, dogmatic way. This volume takes the Greek notion of pharmakon as a way of entry into a reflection on the complexities of the "pharmacological imagination," a reflection that avoids the simplistic logic of good versus bad. It aims to challenge and problematize a narrow understanding of the notion of "drug"—a narrow "pharmacologicalism"—where drugs are reduced to their bio- and neurochemical effects, and where their use is classified as good (under medical supervision, controlled) or bad (addiction). Instead, the notion of "drug" must be contextualized and historicized, its appearances in literature and philosophy must be analyzed. In the opening chapter Mike Jay demonstrates that the pejorative meaning of "drug" as an illegal psychoactive substance is relatively new. He shows that the concept was codified in law only in the twentieth century, starting with the [End Page 453] Hague International Opium Conference in 1912 and culminating with the 1961 UN Single Convention on Drugs, where drug addiction was termed an "evil." Very soon, however, with the rise of the counterculture, the consensus around "bad" drugs began to fracture. The pharmakon always resists simplistic moralizing conceptualizations. There follow thirteen varied and thought-provoking chapters, exploring themes as diverse as the north-south and transatlantic dynamics in the conceptualization of tobacco (Hermann Herlinghaus and Arne Romanowski); the Chinese American author Maxine Hong Kingston as a voice of the 1960s counterculture (Agniezka Soltysik Monnet); narratives of courtly love written in the twelfth century (Cornelia Wild); the theme of intoxication in the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire's work (Diemo Landgraf); and the nineteenth-century experimental project with hashish conducted by the French psychiatrist Moreau de Tours (Katrin Solhdju). Like the pharmakon, the volume cannot be easily summarized and classified. The four sections into which Herlinghaus divided the essays (renarrations into the twentieth century; hemispheric scenarios—cultural explorations; aesthetics and poetology; interfaces) are relatively loose and flow into each other in a fruitful way—rigidity would be counterproductive here. A personal highlight was the chapter "Promise and Deceit: Pharmakos, Drug Replacement Therapy, and the Perils of Experience" by Todd Meyers (which had been previously published in Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry 38 [2014]). Here the author explores the lies he dealt with in his anthropological fieldwork among adolescents abusing heroin, with a focus on the touching story of "Megan" and "Cedric." Meyers argues that the Greek notion of pharmakos, the scapegoat that cleansed a city of its evil, is good to think with when studying addict-patients. He movingly writes "the pharmakos-pharmakon (pharmakeus) is a lie told in order to make the act of healing possible. And the patient-subject is, by necessity, ruined" (p. 334). Plato's Phaedrus and Derrida's "La pharmacie de Platon" (1972) quite naturally play a prominent role in this collection of essays. Martin Treml offers a good chapter on the topic of the pharmakon in ancient Greek traditions. The volume, however, could perhaps have included more on the ancient world. At times, authors appeared to derive their knowledge of the Phaedrus mostly from Michael Rinella's Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens (2010)—there is a wealth of other scholarship on the topic. Nor did the editor settle for a single spelling of "Phaedrus" and other frequently mentioned Greek names. But it is perhaps facile for a historian of ancient medicine to pick on such small points. Generally, I found the volume engaging and stimulating. I particularly enjoyed seeing the theme of love as a drug emerge in several...

Travelling into Alienation and Neurology with a Painter: Georges Moreau (1848-1901).

Georges Moreau (1848-1901) was a painter and the son of the famous psychiatrist Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours. Early in his career, his paintings aspired toward figurative perfection, exalting patriotic and historical themes. His prolific production includes numerous paintings for which he drew inspiration from psychology and certain mental pathologies. At the age of 45 years he suffered right hemiplegia which forced him to set aside large-scale subjects and focus instead on intimist, almost pointillistic works, which brought him closer to the Impressionists, as his portrait of Paul Cézanne shows. Possibly his most well-known painting, Les fascinés de la Charité, service du Dr. Luys, is analysed here by comparison with La Leçon clinique à La Salpêtrière by André Brouillet, which depicts Jean-Martin Charcot and his students.

Les débuts de la Société Médico-Psychologique, entre philosophie et système nerveux central

French psychiatry around 1850 is characterized by the paradigm of unitary alienation (Pinel, Esquirol), the preeminence of the moral treatment, the secondary function of the brain (after the decline of the works of Georget and Bayle and of the phrenology), the development of the asylum system (distinct from general hospitals), the theoretical rivalry between sensationalism or “physiology” (Cabanis) and spiritualism or “psychology” (Maine de Biran). The founders of the Société Médico-Psychologique (Baillarger, Moreau de Tours, Brierre de Boismont) are inspired by the latter, politically conservative, beside their inquiries about the central nervous system. After a slow genesis, between 1843 and 1852, the society begins its reunions during the “authoritary” period of the 2nd Empire. They are characterized by the clinical (on monomania and hallucinations) and forensic discussions between alienists and philosophers around free will. During the decade 1860, the organic theories prevail, through hereditary degeneration (Morel), strengthened by the growth of fundamental sciences and cerebral anatomo-physiology. On the other hand, discussions on classifications and “folie raisonnante” allow the transition towards the paradigm of mental illnesses (J. Falret), later adopted in Germany by Kraepelin.

Lessons Learned About Poor Insight

Lessons Learned About Poor Insight

Annales Moreau de Tours: Vol 2. Actualités de de Thérapeutique Psychiatrique et de Psychopharmacologie.

This is the second volume to be published under the editorship of Henri Baruk and Jacques Launay in a series named after Moreau de a student of Esquirol who, in 1845, published his findings on the relation between hemp and mental illness. He pioneered in the search for the organic basis of hallucinations, and was one of the first to explore the human mind by means of drugs. The editors founded an important psychopharmacological society, la Societe Moreau de Tours, in 1958, to continue the work of this forerunner by stimulating research on the biochemical enigmas of mental illness and study of the therapeutic action of new chemical compounds. The usefulness of this book is hampered by the lack of an index. As is so often the case with similar publications containing papers presented at symposia, it provides the reader with an even flow of, at times rather dull,

Annales Moreau de Tours.

In 1925, when this reviewer was attached as foreign assistant to the university psychiatric clinic at Sainte Anne, he made the acquaintance of a young psychiatrist who was destined to a brilliant future, becoming later Professeur agrege at the medical faculty and medecin-chef de la Maison Nationale de Charenton, that famous hospital outside Paris, founded by Esquirol, which has counted on its staff many of the leading psychiatrists of France, such as Bayle, Moreau de Tours, Legrand du Saulle, Delasiauve, and many more. H. Baruk has made many important contributions to social and moral psychiatry but has been particularly interested in experimental biological investigation related to psychiatric disorders. In 1928, in collaboration with de Jong of Amsterdam, he produced experimental catatonia in animals by means of bulbocapnine. By 1934 his researches had attracted sufficient attention so that the Rockefeller Foundation established for him an experimental psychopharmacological laboratory in which

INSANITY IN CHILDREN.Read in the Section of Neurology and Medical Jurisprudence, at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association.

Moreau (de Tours) with equal force and truth, strikes at the grave psychiatric error involved in the denial by pediatrists, of intellectual, emotional and moral affections of physical origin in the child. Such disordered mental phenomena were explained as immoralities, as eccentricities, or as the result of defective-education and training. From the time of the great physician of Cos, instances have been cited reversing these opinions. Not, however, until school over-pressure became a burning question was the subject regarded as a topic of general medical interest. The psychological state of the normal child even is much misunderstood. Meynert, with exceeding fullness and subtlety, thus outlines the evolution of psychological processes in the child: Kussmaul has shrewdly indicated certain perceptions and movements common to the fetus in utero, which feeds itself, as it were, by swallowing amniotic fluid. He also indicates that there may be special motives, such as the more

Genius and Insanity

In the study of genius and insanity we shall endeavour to follow the empirical rather than the polemical method. This will require the statement of many facts, gathered from different sources, but principally from the instructive works, “L'Homme de Génie,” by Cesare Lombroso, and “Psychologie Morbide,” by Moreau (de Tours).