Centenaire De J M Charcot PDF Download

"Every important nation can point to a few great medical statesmen who symbolize the best in the medical science of their native lands and who, in addition, have become true men of the world. France can point to her share of such men. But perhaps she has no better representative than Jean-Martin Charcot, the man who occupied the world's first professorial chair in clinical neurology at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. Therefore, a story of the life and works of Charcot belongs to the whole world and should be translated in many languages. An English-language biography of Charcot is long overdue. The original Charcot biography in French was written by Professor Georges Guillain and published by Masson in 1955. Guillain's biography contains more than its title implies, for he deals with two celebrated French monuments : one a man, J.-M. Charcot ; the other, a medical institution, the Salpêtrière. These two, Charcot and the Salpêtrière, are inseparable ; for without one there would not be the other in the sense that we understand both of them today. Guillain describes how the Salpêtrière began in the seventeenth century as an asylum for the detention of beggars and old women, of prostitutes and perverted girls, and for the incarceration of insane women ; how it also served as a prison for women convicted of adultery, theft, or murder and for political prisoners. Guillain continues by showing how during the nineteenth century, under the indomitable direction of Charcot, this "pandemonium of infirmities" was transformed into the world's greatest center for clinical neurologic research, which to this day still reflects the genius and inspiration of its founder. In addition, as Guillain brings out, the history of the Salpêtrière and the life of Charcot are closely interwoven with the fabric of the history of Paris and indeed of France over a period that includes : The French Revolution, the Napoleonic Era, restoration of the Bourbons, the return of Napoleon III, the defeat of the Paris Commune of 1871, and the Prussian occupation of Paris. During these times of political and economic ferment, France gave birth in rapid succession to some of the greatest minds of its history. In the nineteenth century the center of world medicine gravitated to Paris. It is against this background of socioeconomic and political eruptions and of scientific discoveries that Guillain paints his picture of Charcot and the Salpêtrière. So the book should be of interest not only to neurologists and physicians but to all readers interested in the history of Paris and of France."--adapted from Translator's Preface to American Edition, pages vii-x.