1772-1840 · French psychiatrist and student of Philippe Pinel
About Jean-Etienne Dominique Esquirol
Jean-Etienne Dominique Esquirol (1772-1840) was a French psychiatrist, a student of Pinel, and one of the chief organizers of nineteenth-century alienism. He worked at the Salpetriere and Charenton, helped define monomania and lypemania, and argued for specialized institutions for the insane. His clinical and administrative writings deeply affected French and Anglo-American asylum medicine.
“Insanity, or mental alienation, is a cerebral affection, ordinarily chronic, and without fever ; characterized by disorders of sensibility, understanding, in- telligence, and will”
Esquirol expands Pinelian alienism into a more elaborate clinical and institutional system. Mental Maladies surveys insanity as a family of disorders marked by disturbances of perception, judgment, passion, volition, and bodily function.