Jean-Martin Charcot

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825 - 1893, France), one of France’s greatest medical teachers and clinicians of the 19th century, was instrumental in developing modern science in the field of neurology with fifteen nomenclatures to his praise. His techniques, discoveries and passion for the subject made the brain and the spinal cord the epicenter of all medical innovations towards the early 19th century. Charcot developed a special interest for a rare disease at the time, called hysteria, and developed the term for another condition called multiple sclerosis. Charcot’s employment of hypnosis in an attempt to discover an organic basis for hysteria stimulated Sigmund Freud’s interest in the psychological origins of neurosis. Charcot was affiliated to the University of Paris (1860–93) where he began a lifelong association with the Salpêtrière Hospital (Paris) in 1862, and influenced many medical enthusiasts all over the world. His students included names such as Sigmund Freud, Alfred Binet, Pierre Janet and Georges Gilles de la Tourette.