Leçons sur les maladies du système nerveux

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-93) was a professor of anatomical pathology at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, and one of the founders of modern neurology. Numerous disorders are named after him, and he was one of the best known doctors in nineteenth-century France. He was the first to describe and name multiple sclerosis, and undertook crucial research into what became known as Parkinson's Disease. He also worked on hysteria, and was one of Freud's teachers. These two volumes of lectures on neurological illnesses, first published in Paris in 1872-3 and 1877, were based on extensive clinical studies at the Salpêtrière, and edited by Désiré Magloire Bourneville. Detailed analysis of symptoms, sometimes using photography, combined with post-mortem analyses, allowed Charcot to produce classic descriptions of different neurological disorders. Volume 2 includes methods of clinical observation, and notes on spinal compression, infantile paralysis, Ménière's Disease, and epilepsy caused by syphilis.