Jean-Martin Charcot

Jean-Martin Charcot built his career at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, where he developed influential clinical descriptions of neurological diseases and used public demonstrations to teach students about hysteria, paralysis and other disorders. His lectures attracted physicians from across Europe.

Charcot helped establish modern clinical neurology and influenced the development of psychiatry and psychoanalysis through his research and teaching. Jean-Martin Charcot also worked as Professor at the Salpêtrière. Jean-Martin Charcot was born in Paris, France and died in Montsauche-les-Settons, France.

Sebastian Faulks’ Human Traces places Jean-Martin Charcot within the new medical world that Jacques Rebière and Thomas Midwinter enter while trying to understand mental illness and the nervous system. Charcot’s clinical work at the Salpêtrière, especially his attempts to classify hysteria and neurological disease, forms part of the intellectual background against which the fictional physicians develop, imitate and challenge contemporary theories of mind.