science · 12 December 1840 · 184 years ago
death
Died 12 Dec 1840 at age 68 (born 3 Feb 1772).
French psychiatrist who was the first to combine precise clinical descriptions with the statistical analysis of mental illnesses. He was a pioneer of the humane treatment of persons considered insane and was appointed resident physician at the Bedlam of Paris in 1811. He was the Chief physician of Charenton asylum (1826). The book he authored, Des maladies mentales (1838), was the first modern textbook of psychiatry. He gave the the first modern description of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in 1838, which he called the folie de doute, or doubting madness, and suspected it was rooted in a physical problem in the brain.
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