Philippe Pinel, born on 20 April 1745, was a French physician who pioneered in the humane treatment of
the mentally ill.
Arriving in Paris (1778), he supported
himself for a number of years by translating scientific and medical works and
by teaching mathematics. During that period, he also began visiting
privately confined mental patients and writing articles on his
observations. In 1792 he became the chief physician at the Paris asylum for
men, Bicêtre, and made his first bold reform by unchaining patients, many of
whom had been restrained for 30 to 40 years. He did the same for the female
inmates of Salpêtrière when he became the director there in 1794.
Discarding the long-popular equation of mental
illness with demoniacal possession, Pinel regarded mental illness as the result
of excessive exposure to social and psychological stresses and, in some
measure, of heredity and physiological damage. In Nosographie philosophique (1798;
“Philosophical Classification of Diseases”) he distinguished various psychoses
and described, among other phenomena, hallucination, withdrawal, and a variety
of other symptoms.
Pinel did away with such treatments as bleeding, purging, and blistering
and favoured a therapy that included close and friendly contact with the
patient, discussion of personal difficulties, and a program of purposeful
activities. His Traité médico-philosophique sur
l’aliénation mentale ou la manie (1801; “Medico-Philosophical Treatise on
Mental Alienation or Mania”) discusses his
psychologically oriented approach.
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