Back to the future: Valentin Magnan, French psychiatry, and the classification of mental diseases, 1885-1925

Social History of Medicine

Volumn 9, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 383-408

  Dowbiggin, Ian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND   (Canada)

Author keywords

B n dict Augustin Morel; Clinical psychiatry; Degeneracy theory; Emil Kraepelin; Emmanuel R gis; History of France; Paranoia; Psychiatry; Schizophrenia; Valentin Magnan

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CLASSIFICATION; FRANCE; HISTORY; HUMAN; LINGUISTICS; MENTAL DISEASE; PSYCHIATRY;

CLASSIFICATION; FRANCE; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; MENTAL DISORDERS; PSYCHIATRY; VOCABULARY;

EID: 0030326015     PISSN: 0951631X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/shm/9.3.383     Document Type: Review

References (153)

1. E. H. Ackerknecht, Medicine at the Paris Hospital, 1794-1848 (Baltimore, 1967).
2. For French psychiatry around the turn of the nineteenth century, see D. B. Weiner, The Citizen-Patient in Revolutionary and Imperial Paris (Baltimore and London, 1993), especially pp. 247-77.
3. For the history of degeneration as a medical theory, see G. Genil-Perrin, Histoire des origines et de l'évolution de l'idée de dégénérescence en médećine mentale (Paris, 1913);
4. R. A. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Concept of National Decline (Princeton, 1984);
5. I. Dowbiggin, Inheriting Madness: Professionalization and Psychiatric Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991).
6. For the wider cultural and political dimensions of degeneracy theory, see R. A. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (New York and Oxford, 1993), pp. 72-97;
7. D. Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848-c. 1918 (Cambridge, 1989).
8. See also R. Huertas, 'Madness and Degeneration', Parts 1-4, History of Psychiatry, 3 (1992). 391-411;
9. R. Huertas, 'Madness and Degeneration', Parts 1-4, History of Psychiatry, 4 (1993), 1-21; 141-58; 301-19.
10. For Kraepelin's contributions to the classification of mental diseases, see the essays by P. Hoff, G. E. Berrios and R. Hauser, and E. J. Engstrom, in G. E. Berrios and R. Porter (eds.) A Clinical History of Psychiatry: The Origin and History of Psychiatric Disorders (London, 1995), pp. 261-301.
11. See also E. J. Engstrom, 'Emil Kraepelin: Leben und Werk des Psychiaters im Spannungsfeld zwischen postivistischer Wissenschaft und Irrationalität', (unpublished Master's Thesis, University of Munich, 1990);
12. E. J. Engstrom, 'Emil Kraepelin: Psychiatry and Public Affairs in Wilhelmine Germany', History of Psychiatry, 2 (1991), 111-32. One US psychiatrist who did his best to counter the spread of Kraepelinianism and keep English-speaking psychiatrists abreast of developments in French psychiatry between the 1890s and his retirement in 1921 was G. Alder Blumer, the medical superintendent of the Utica Asylum (1886-99) and the Butler Hospital (1899-1921) and long-time editor and associate editor of the American Journal of Insanity.
13. In his lectures on psychiatry at the Albany Medical College in the 1890s he used as a textbook E. Régis's Practical Manual of Mental Medicine, 2nd French edn. trans. H. M. Bannister (Utica, 1894). Blumer was a faithful correspondent with Régis and V. Parant, two prominent French psychiatrists whose views will be dealt with in this paper.
14. See G. A. Blumer, 'The History and Use of the Term Dementia', American Journal of Insanity, 63 (1907), 337-47.
15. For more on Blumer, see I. Dowbiggin, '"An Exodus of Enthusiasm": G. Alder Blumer, Eugenics, and US Psychiatry, 1890-1920', Medical History, 36 (1992), 379-402;
16. I. Dowbiggin, Reproduction and Mental Illness: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880-1940 (Ithaca, forthcoming in 1997).
17. P. J. Pichot, 'The Diagnosis and Classification of Mental Disorders in French-Speaking Countries: Background, Current Views and Comparison with other Nomenclatures', Psychological Medicine, 12 (1982), 475-92, p. 490.
18. See also P. J. Pichot, 'The French Approach to Psychiatric Classification', British Journal of Psychiatry, 144 (1984), 113-18;
19. P. J. Pichot, 'Les bouffëes délirantes et les délires chroniques: Deux concepts nosologiques francais', Annales médico-psychologiques, 137 (1979), 52-8 (hereafter cited as Amp.);
20. S. F. Signer, 'De Clérambault's Concept of Erotomania and its Place in His Thought', History of Psychiatry, 2 (1991), 409-17.
21. Pichot, 'Diagnosis and Classification in French-Speaking Countries', p. 491. Pichot's italics.
22. For an exhaustive and perceptive description of one critical chapter in the clinical history of hysteria, especially with regard to the introduction of technical means for distinguishing between neurosyphilis and other neurological and psychiatric disorders, see M. S. Micale, 'On the "Disappearance" of Hysteria: A Study in the Clinical Deconstruction of a Diagnosis', Isis, 84 (1993), 496-526.
23. See also M. S. Micale, Approaching Hysteria: Disease and Its Interpretations (Princeton, 1995).
24. For a searching analysis of the history of psychosomatic diseases, see E. Shorter, From Paralysis To Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era (New York, 1992). Rafael Huertas's examination of the history of degeneration theory (footnote no. 2), while acute and detailed, does not deal with its decline.
25. Patricia Prestwich of the University of Alberta (Canada) is currently working on a study of the clinical records of Magnan's Sainte-Anne.
26. For an indication of the growing scholarly interest in the clinical history of psychiatry, see Berrios and Porter (eds.), A History of Clinical Psychiatry.
27. P. Sérieux, Valentin Magnan: Sa vie et son oeuvre (1835-1916) (Paris, 1918).
28. See also R. Semelaigne, Les pionniers de la psychiatrie française avant et après Pinel, 2 vols. (Paris, 1930-32), v. 2, 210-22.
29. To one contemporary colleague in psychiatry, Magnan was not as equipped temperamentally as Charcot to win this battle for cultural notoriety. Magnan apparently did not possess the 'élan' or skills for public speaking. T. Simon, 'Magnan dans son service de l'Admission a l'asile Sainte-Anne', Amp., 93 année 1 (1935), 715-28, p. 716.
30. For the best discussion of the 1838 Law and its impact on the national asylum system, see J. Goldstein, Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 276-321. The 1838 Law had authorized the internment by civil authorities of anyone who threatened 'public order or the safety of individuals'. Magnan and other psychiatrists protested against the way patients were placed in police custody and then transported in police vans to Sainte-Anne for further examination. As a result a 'voluntary' admission procedure without police intervention was re-established in the Seine department in 1876, but the system of processing patients at the Special Infirmary stayed in place well into the twentieth century.
31. See P. E. Prestwich, 'Family Strategies and Medical Power: "Voluntary" Committal in a Parisian Asylum, 1876-1914', Journal of Social History, 27 (1994), 799-818.
32. See also R. Harris, Murders and Madness: Medicine, Law, and Society in the Fin-de-siècle (Oxford, 1989), especially pp. 125-54.
33. Perhaps the best example of a patron in nineteenth-century French psychiatry was J. E. D. Esquirol (1772-1840), the founder of the 'monomania' doctrine in 1819. Esquirol argued that people whose thinking was characterized by an obsessional fixation on one topic coinciding with reason on all other matters suffered from a specific mental disease called 'monomania'. Esquirol's many admirers helped to spread his monomania doctrine; significantly enough, monomania went out of fashion shortly after Esquirol's death in 1840. With the venerable head of the Esquirol 'circle' gone the professional advantages to defending his theories quickly vanished. For a discussion of this system of patronage within nineteenth-century French psychiatry, see Goldstein, Console and Classify, pp. 120-51.
34. See also T. N. Clark and P. P. Clark, Prophets and Patrons: The French University and the Emergence of the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), ch. 2.
35. For the monomania doctrine, see Goldstein, Console and Classify, pp. 152-96. In the words of one French psychiatrist in 1888: 'By what means can we differentiate diseases, distinguish one from the other, trace their characteristics and specify their boundaries? Above all we ought to refer to anatomical lesions, when they can be identified. But the misfortune of psychiatry is that it most often lacks this frame of reference. As a consequence we refer to symptoms, and especially to the causes of a disease when it is possible to know them.'
36. B. Ball, 28 May 1888 meeting of the Société médico-psychologique, Amp., 7e série 8 (1888), pp. 112-15.
37. For similar comments, see Paul Garnier, 30 July 1888 meeting of the Société, Amp., ibid. pp. 456-7.
38. Micale, 'On the "Disappearance" of Hysteria', p. 512.
39. V. Magnan, 'Chronic Delusional Insanity of Systematic Evolution', trans. A. Marie and J. MacPherson, American Journal of Insanity, 51 (1895), 37-57, 175-98, 524-38;
40. V. Magnan, Chronic Delusional Insanity of Systematic Evolution American Journal of Insanity, 52 (1896), 397-415.
41. B. A. Morel, Études cliniques, 2 vols. (Paris, 1852), v. 1, p. 234.
42. In 1854 the psychiatrists Jules Baillarger and J. P. Falret simultaneously charged that there was a link between mania and melancholy. The first recognizably modern description of paranoia was C. Lasègue's 1852 essay on 'délire de persécution. Lasègue argued that among those patients who retained their faculty of reasoning yet exhibited disordered thinking on one particular subject there was a single group characterized by pronounced and systematic delusions of persecution. See C. Lasègue, 'Du délire de persécution', Archives générales de Médecine, 28 (1852), 129-50.
43. H. Baruk, La psychiatrie française de Pinel à nos jours (Paris, 1967), pp. 58-60.
44. R. Huertas, 'Madness and Degeneration: From "Fallen Angel" to Mentally Ill', History of Psychiatry, 3 (1992), 391-411, p. 403. In the words of another historian of psychiatry, the 'psychiatric sections' of Morel's Traité 'are rather short and not specific'.
45. G. E. Berrios, 'Obsessional Disorders During the Nineteenth Century: Terminological and Classificatory Issues', in W. F. Bynum, R. Porter, and M. Shepherd (eds.) The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, Volume 1: 'People and Ideas' (London and New York, 1985), pp. 166-87, p. 183, n.79.
46. For references to the loose and imprecise popular definition of degeneracy theory, see Pick, Faces of Degeneration, pp. 7-8.
47. V. Magnan and P. Legrain, Les dégénérés: Etat mental et syndromes épisodiques (Paris, 1895), p. 79.
48. See also E. A. Williams, The Physical and the Moral: Anthropology, Physiology, and Philosophical Medicine in France, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1994), especially pp. 247-9.
49. Huertas, 'Madness and Degeneration', p. 407.
50. As Robert A. Nye has argued, the phrase 'struggle for life' was not derived from Darwinism but instead 'refers to the struggle of the individual organism to adjust its organic economy to achieve a successful adaptation'. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics, p. 124n.
51. See also Williams, The Physical and the Moral, pp. 249-51.
52. Magnan and Legrain, Les dégénérés, pp. 31-2, 37-8.
53. See also Sérieux, Valentin Magnan, p. 66.
54. A. Ritti, 'Cinquantenaire de la Société médico-psychologique', Amp., 8e série 16 (1902), pp. 78-82.
55. Pichot, 'Diagnosis and Classification in French-Speaking Countries', p. 477.
56. T. Simon, 'Magnan dans son service de l'Admission à l'asile Sainte-Anne', Amp., 93e année 1 (1935), 715-28.
57. See also Sérieux, Valentin Magnan, p. 169. Evidence of his personality flaws surfaced early in his career when in 1864 he served as an assistant to Prosper Lucas (1808-85) at Bicêtre, and later shared duties with him at Sainte-Anne until Lucas's retirement in 1879. Despite the fact that both men shared a deep interest in the hereditary dimensions of mental disease, relations between the two were extremely cool; when asked later in life about his years working with Lucas, Magnan refused to mention his name.
58. Sérieux, Valentin Magnan, pp. 8-11.
59. Semelaigne, Les pionniers de la psychiatrie française, v. 2, p. 202;
60. Sérieux, Valentin Magnan, pp. 136-7.
61. J. Séglas, 30 January 1888 meeting of the Société médico-psychologique, Amp., 7e série 7 (1888), 338-42;
62. 27 February 1888 meeting of the Société, Amp., ibid., pp. 453-5.
63. Genil-Perrin, Histoire des origines et de l'évolution de l'idée de dégénérescence en médécine mentale, passim.
64. Indeed, in his clinical history of a 'degenerate' family in 1887, Séglas cited the studies of Charcot on heredity, as well as those of Jules Dejerine (1849-1917) and Charles Féré (1852-1907), both members of the Charcot school. But he flagrantly omitted to mention the work of Magnan or his students such as Paul Garnier (1848-1905) and Paul-Maurice Legrain (1860-1939). J. Séglas, 'Une famille de dégénérés'. Amp., 7e série 5 (1887), 471-5.
65. P. Bercherie, Les fondements de la clinique: Histoire et structure du savoir psychiatrique (Paris, 1980), p. 153.
66. See also Etienne Trillat, 'Une histoire de la psychiatrie au XXe siècle', in J. Postel and C. Quétel (eds.) Nouvelle histoire de la psychiatrie (Toulouse, 1983), p. 455.
67. B. Ball, Leçons sur les maladies mentales, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1890), pp. 993-8.
68. C. Lasègue, 'Du delire de persécution', Archives générales de médécine, 28 (1852), 129-50.
69. J. Christian, 26 March 1888 meeting of the Société médico-psychologique, Amp., 7e série 8 (1888), p. 485.
70. B. Ball, 28 May 1888 meeting of the Société médico-psychologique, Amp., 7e série 8 (1888), p. 112, 485.
71. See Sérieux, Valentin Magnan, p. 88 for how Magnan's délire chronique absorbed other diagnostic creations of French psychiatrists, including Morel's and Achille Foville's.
72. E. Régis to G. A. Blumer, 25 August 1894, G. Alder Blumer Papers, Isaac Ray Historical Library, Butler Hospital, Providence, RI, USA, Box 27 (hereafter cited as BP).
73. P. Garnier, 25 October 1886 meeting of the Société médico-psychologique, Amp., 7e série 5 (1887), 121-34.
74. See, for example, J. Falret, 30 November 1885 meeting of the Amp., 7e série 3 (1886), 276-8;
75. 26 July 1886 meeting of the Société médico-psychologique, Amp., ibid. 5 (1887), 115-18.
76. Genil-Perrin, Histoire des origines et de l'évolution de l'idée de dégénérescence, pp. 119, 279.
77. For another example of the invidious distinctions psychiatrists increasingly liked to draw between Morel and Magnan, see E. Toulouse and M. Mignard, 'La théorie confusionnelle et l'auto-conduction' Amp., 10e série 5 (1914), 641-57. In contrast to Morel's 'noble and eclectic, sweeping and conciliatory mind,' there was Magnan's 'rigid and absolute' théory and the therapeutic 'fatalism of his school'.
78. G. A. Blumer, 'Death of Professor Régis,' BP, Box 38. When Régis died in 1918 Blumer noted that 'it is no exaggeration to say - there passed on the most brilliant alienist of France'.
79. C. Lasègue, 'Le délire alcoolique n'est pas un délire, mais un rêve,' Archives générales de médécine, 2 (1881), 513-36.
80. For a biographic sketch of Régis, see Postel and Quétel (eds.) Nouvelle histoire de la psychiatrie, p. 701.
81. B. Ball, 'Introduction' to Régis, Practical Manual of Mental Medicine, p. vi.
82. E. Régis to G. A. Blumer, 25 August 1894, BP, Box 27.
83. Régis, Practical Manual of Mental Medicine, pp. 212-40.
84. Régis, Practical Manual of Mental Medicine, pp. 130-44.
85. For an earlier example of Régis's fidelty to Magnan's views, see E. Régis, 'Note sur quelques cas de folie héréditaire chez les gens âgés', Amp., 7e série 5 (1887), 210-28.
86. E. Toulouse in Préfecture de la Seine, Direction des affaires departmentales, Rapport sur le service des aliénés de la Seine, 1895, p. 174.
87. Cited in Prestwich, 'Drinkers, Drunkards and Degenerates: The Alcoholic Population of a Parisian Asylum, 1867-1914', p. 17.
88. G. Ballet, Traité de pathologie mentale (Paris, 1903), p. vi.
89. B. Ball, 28 May 1888 meeting of the Société médico-psychologique. Amp., 7e série 8 (1888), p. 115.
90. The estimation of Magnan's patriotism was not improved when his follower Paul Garnier claimed in 1888 that much of the merit of Magnan's classification lay in its capacity to win support from the international psychiatric community. See P. Garnier, 30 July 1888 meeting of the Société médico-psychologique, Amp., 7e série 8 (1888), pp. 464-5.
91. In Victor Parant's words, even among those French psychiatrists who followed Kraepelin his theory about dementia praecox 'has not been accepted without certain limitations'. See V. Parant, 'The Question of Dementia Praecox in France', American Journal of Insanity, 61 (1905), 501-19, p.
92. J. Christian, 'De la dementia praecox des jeunes gens: contribution à l'étude de l'hébephrénie', Amp., 8e série 9 (1899), 43-65; 200-16; 420-36.
93. For similar comments about the way psychiatric practice is affected by the distinctions between public and private mental hospitals, see Dr Thomsen, 'Discussion', Comptes-rendus de congrès des médéans aliénistes et neurologistes de France et des pays de langue française, Brussels, 1-8 August, 1903 (Paris, 1904), v. 2, p. 66 (hereafter cited as Comptes-rendus). Public asylum psychiatrists by the end of the nineteenth century objected strenuously to the tendency of families to delay admission until there was virtually no hope of recovery. This was a particular problem in the Seine department where the horrors of being processed at the Special Infirmary at the Paris Prefecture of Police discouraged families from voluntarily seeking hospitalization for their relatives.
94. Prestwich, 'Family Strategies and Medical Power', p. 802.
95. Bruno Bonfils, 'Histoire du concept de démence précoce en France', (unpublished Medical Thesis, University of Paris, 1979), p. 9.
96. G. Ballet, 'Discussion', Comptes-rendus, 1904, v. 2, p. 71.
97. Bonfils, 'Histoire du concept de démence précoce en France', p. 16.
98. See also T. Gineste, 'Naissance de la psychiatrie infantile (Destins de l'idiotie, origine des psychoses)', in Postel and Quétel (eds.) Nouvelle histoire de la psychiatrie, pp. 499-516.
99. For the similarities between Kraepelin's and Magnan's clinical approaches, see H. Baruk, La psychiatrie française de Pinel à nos jours (Paris, 1967), pp. 44-5.
100. Bonfils, 'Histoire du concept de démence précoce en France', pp. 23-6.
101. A. Claus, 'Sur Catatonie et stupeur', Comptes-rendus, v. 1, pp. 5-129;
102. 'Réponse de M. Claus, rapporteur', Comptes-rendus, ibid. v. 2, pp. 86-90.
103. G. Ballet, 'La question de la démence précoce', Comptes-rendus, 1903, v. 2, pp. 58-9.
104. Semelaigne, Les pionniers de la psychiatrie française, v. 2, pp. 257-62.
105. G. Deny and P. Roy, La démence précoce (Paris, 1903), passim.
106. G. Deny, 'Les démences vésaniques', Comptes-rendus, 1904, v. 1, pp. 141-221. Deny was more critical of Morel in his accounts of manic-depressive illness. Deny alleged that Morel had done to this illness what he had done to dementia praecox: by placing it in the first class of hereditary insanities he had failed to see it was an autonomous disease.
107. G. Deny, 'De la folie maniaque-depressive', Archives de neurologie, 22 (1906), 1-19.
108. For Magnan's theory that 'stupidity' was simply a 'complication' of degeneracy, see Sérieux, Valentin Magnan, p. 104.
109. For example, there was René Masse;on who in 1902 defended his medical thesis on the psychology of dementia praecox and who like Deny published a book on dementia praecox in 1904. See R. Masselon, 'La psychologie de démence précoce', (unpublished medical thesis, University of Paris, 1902);
110. R. Masselon, La démence précoce (Paris, 1904).
111. See also Masselon, 'Discussion', Comptes-rendus, 1904, v. 2, pp. 83-9;
112. M. Dide, 'Discussion', Comptes-rendus, ibid., p. 127.
113. For both an analysis of what was said at the 1904 Congrès and a debate over the virtues of dementia praecox, see E. Marandon de Montyel and L. Mongeri, 'Les formes de la démence précoce', Amp., 9e série 2 (1905), 246-65.
114. P. Garnier, 'Discussion', Comptes-rendus, v. 2, pp. 120-3.
115. See E. Dupré, 'Paul Garnier (1848-1905)', Amp., 4e série 3 (1905), 557-72.
116. Pactet et Privat de Fortunié, 'Discussion', Comptes-rendus, v. 2, pp. 105-20, p. 106.
117. Vallon, 'Discussion', Comptes-rendus, v. 2, p. 104.
118. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France, p. 323;
119. see also Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France, ibid. pp. 227-64.
120. Regis, Précis de psychiatrie, pp. iii-iv;
121. Henri Damaye, 'La psychiatrie actuelle et la therapeutique des affections curables', Amp., 10e série 3 (1913), 290-8.
122. V. Parant, 'Discussion', Comptes-rendus, v. 2, p. 68.
123. J. A. G. Doutrebente, 'Discussion', Comptes-rendus, 1904, v. 2, pp. 100-3.
124. V. Magnan, 'Chronic Delusional Insanity of Systematic Evolution', trans. A. Marie and J. Macpherson, American Journal of Insanity, 52 (1896), p. 403.
125. Toulouse and Mignard, 'La théorie confusionnelle et l'auto-conduction', p. 655.
126. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France, p. 314.
127. For a discussion of the historical debate over the 'nationalist revival', see Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France, ibid., pp. 310-29.
128. The phrase 'nationalist revival' was coined by Eugen Weber in his The Nationalist Revival in France, 1905-1914 (Berkeley, 1959).
129. For the about-face of French intellectuals in their opinions of Germany, see C. Digeon, La crise allemande de la pensée française, 1870-1914 (Paris, 1959).
130. Régis, Practical Manual of Mental Medicine, p. xv.
131. E. Régis to G. A. Blumer, 28 November 1905, BP, Box 30. In his Précis he insisted that pro-German trends in French psychiatry had engendered a kind of 'snobism' that over-estimated what came from abroad and under-estimated the value of 'French science' and its 'incomparable qualities of precise observation, order, method, and clarity'. E. Régis, Précis de psychiatrie, 3rd edn. (Paris, 1906), p. v.
132. E. Régis to G. A. Blumer, 14 May 1911, BP, Box 31.
133. E. Régis to G. A. Blumer, 13 December 1917, BP, Box 34.
134. Semelaigne, Les pionniers de la psychiatrie française, v. 2, pp. 262-8.
135. V. Parant, 'D'une prétendue entité morbide dite démence précoce'. Amp., 9e série 1 (1905), 229-41.
136. V. Parant to G. A. Blumer, 31 March 1910, BP, Box 31.
137. V. Parant, 'Le retour à la médécine mentale française'. Amp., 10e série 6 (1915), 401-12.
138. V. Parant, 'Ayons le culte des anciens aliénistes fiançais', Amp., 10e série 9 (1918), 60-71, p. 71.
139. A. Paris, Amp., 10e série 9 (1918), 193-5.
140. Today the closest psychiatric diagnosis to paranoia is 'delusional (paranoid) disorder'. The American Psychiatric Association defines it as a 'relatively uncommon' disorder distinct from schizophrenia and chiefly characterized by 'the presence of a persistent, nonbizarre delusion'. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 3rd edn. (revised) (Washington, 1987), pp. 199-202.
141. For a review of the debate over delusional disorders in today's psychiatry, see K. S. Kendler, 'The Nosological Validity of Paranoia (Simple Delusional Disorder)', Archives of General Psychiatry, 37 (1980), 699-706.
142. For the history of delusional disorder, see K. S. Kendler, 'Delusional Disorder: Clinical Section'
143. and I. Dowbiggin, 'Delusional Disorder: Social Section', in Berrios and Porter (eds.) A History of Clinical Psychiatry, pp. 360-83.
144. J. Seglas, 'Paranoia - Systematized Delusions and Mental Degenerations: An Historical and Critical Review', trans. William Noyes, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 13 (1888), 157-71, p. 160.
145. See also J. Séglas, 'La démence paranoide', Amp., 8e série 12 (1900), 232-46.
146. Pichot, 'Diagnosis and Classification in French-Speaking Countries', p. 490.
147. Pichot, 'The French Approach to Psychiatric Classification', p. 116.
148. P. Sérieux and J. Capgras, Les folies raisonnantes: Le délire d'interprétation (Paris, 1909), pp. 5, 8, 305.
149. G. Ballet, 'La psychose hallucinatoire chronique'. Encéphale, 6 (1911), 401-11.
150. Genil-Perrin, Histoire des origines, p. 259.
151. See also Bonfils, 'Histoire du concept de démence précoce en France', p. 58.
152. J. Lautier, 'Le démembrement de la démence précoce', Amp., 12e série 1 (1924), 299-312, p. 306.
153. In view of E. Williams's seminal The Physical and the Moral it is also worth considering whether or not Magnan's reputation fell victim to the 'tendency toward disciplinary and professional specialization' within late nineteenth-century French medicine. As Williams argues, Magnan was typical of post-1850 French physicians who, despite trying to distance themselves from the earlier medical project to chart the connections between the physical and psychological dimensions of human nature, ultimately borrowed much of the terminology and many of the concepts of that enterprise. This feature of his research increasingly may have encouraged other psychiatrists to disown Magnan as they attempted to forge an autonomous and singular specialty free of the 'vitalist' and abstract traces of the anthropological 'science of man' of old (pp. 244-72).