52 Facts About Philippe Pinel

Philippe Pinel was a French physician, precursor of psychiatry and incidentally a zoologist.

Philippe Pinel was instrumental in the development of a more humane psychological approach to the custody and care of psychiatric patients, referred to today as moral therapy.

Philippe Pinel worked for the abolition of the shackling of mental patients by chains and, more generally, for the humanisation of their treatment.

Philippe Pinel made notable contributions to the classification of mental disorders and has been described by some as "the father of modern psychiatry".

An 1809 description of a case that Philippe Pinel recorded in the second edition of his textbook on insanity is regarded by some as the earliest evidence for the existence of the form of mental disorder later known as dementia praecox or schizophrenia, although Emil Kraepelin is generally accredited with its first conceptualisation.

Philippe Pinel had a great influence on psychiatry and the treatment of the alienated in Europe and the United States.

Philippe Pinel was born in Jonquieres, the South of France, in the modern department of Tarn.

Philippe Pinel spent fifteen years earning his living as a writer, translator, and editor because the restrictive regulations of the old regime prevented him from practicing medicine in Paris.

Philippe Pinel failed twice in a competition which would have awarded him funds to continue his studies.

Philippe Pinel was known among natural scientists as a regular contributor to the Journal de physique.

Philippe Pinel studied mathematics, translated medical works into French, and undertook botanical expeditions.

Philippe Pinel remained there for five years prior to the Revolution, gathering observations on insanity and beginning to formulate his views on its nature and treatment.

Philippe Pinel was an Ideologue, a disciple of the abbe de Condillac.

Philippe Pinel was a clinician who believed that medical truth was derived from clinical experience.

Philippe Pinel did remove the chains from patients at the Salpetriere three years later, after Pussin joined him there.

Philippe Pinel visited each patient, often several times a day, and took careful notes over two years.

Philippe Pinel's objective was to assemble a detailed case history and a natural history of the patient's illness.

In 1795, Philippe Pinel became chief physician of the Hospice de la Salpetriere, a post that he retained for the rest of his life.

Philippe Pinel missed Pussin and in 1802 secured his transfer to the Salpetriere.

Philippe Pinel created an inoculation clinic in his service at the Salpetriere in 1799, and the first vaccination in Paris was given there in April 1800.

In 1795 Philippe Pinel had been appointed as a professor of medical pathology, a chair that he held for twenty years.

Philippe Pinel was briefly dismissed from this position in 1822, with ten other professors, suspected of political liberalism, but reinstated as an honorary professor shortly thereafter.

In 1798 Philippe Pinel published an authoritative classification of diseases in his Nosographie philosophique ou methode de l'analyse appliquee a la medecine.

Philippe Pinel based his nosology on ideas of William Cullen, employing the same biologically-inspired terminology of 'genera' and 'species' of disorder.

Philippe Pinel experienced the same periodical fury at the asylum where he plotted against the governor.

Philippe Pinel moved restlessly about the house, talking endlessly and shouting passionately on insignificant reasons.

Philippe Pinel's book had an enormous influence on both French and Anglo-American psychiatrists during the nineteenth century.

Philippe Pinel meant by alienation that the patient feels like a stranger to the world of the 'sane'.

In 1802 Philippe Pinel published La Medecine Clinique which was based on his experiences at the Salpetriere and in which he extended his previous book on classification and disease.

Philippe Pinel was elected to the Academie des Sciences in 1804 and was a member of the Academie de Medecine from its founding in 1820.

Philippe Pinel observed and documented the subtleties and nuances of human experience and behavior, conceiving of people as social animals with imagination.

Philippe Pinel spoke of avarice, pride, friendship, bigotry, the desire for reputation, for conquest, and vanity.

Philippe Pinel identified other predisposing psychosocial factors such as an unhappy love affair, domestic grief, devotion to a cause carried to the point of fanaticism, religious fear, the events of the revolution, violent and unhappy passions, exalted ambitions of glory, financial reverses, religious ecstasy, and outbursts of patriotic fervor.

Philippe Pinel developed specific practical techniques, rather than general concepts and assumptions.

Philippe Pinel offered benevolent support and encouragement, although patients who persistently resisted or caused trouble might be threatened with incarceration or punishment if they were not able to control themselves.

Philippe Pinel argued that psychological intervention must be tailored to each individual rather than be based solely on the diagnostic category, and that it must be grounded in an understanding of the person's own perspective and history.

Philippe Pinel noted that "the treatment of insanity without considering the differentiating characteristics of the patients [la distinction des especes] has been at times superfluous, rarely useful, and often harmful", describing the partial or complete failures of some psychological approaches, as well as the harm that the usual cruel and harsh treatments caused to patients before they came to his hospital.

Philippe Pinel saw improvement as often resulting from natural forces within the patient, an improvement that treatment could at best facilitate and at worst interfere with.

Philippe Pinel recommended the use of laxatives for the prevention of nervous excitement and relapse.

Philippe Pinel often traced mental states to physiological states of the body, and in fact could be said to have practiced psychosomatic medicine.

In general, Philippe Pinel traced organic causes to the gastrointestinal system and peripheral nervous system more often than to brain dysfunction.

Philippe Pinel was concerned with a balance between control by authority and individual liberty.

Philippe Pinel believed in "the art of subjugating and taming the insane" and the effectiveness of "a type of apparatus of fear, of firm and consistent opposition to their dominating and stubbornly held ideas", but that it must be proportional and motivated only by a desire to keep order and to bring people back to themselves.

Philippe Pinel argued that otherwise positive character traits could cause a person to be vulnerable to the distressing vicissitudes of life, for example "those persons endowed with a warmth of imagination and a depth of sensitivity, who are capable of experiencing powerful and intense emotions, [since it is they] who are most predisposed to mania".

Philippe Pinel distanced himself from religious views, and in fact considered that excessive religiosity could be harmful.

Philippe Pinel is generally seen as the physician who more than any other transformed the concept of 'the mad' into that of patients needing care and understanding, establishing a field that would eventually be called psychiatry.

Philippe Pinel's actions took place in the context of the Enlightenment, and a number of others were reforming asylums along humanitarian lines.

For example, Vincenzo Chiarugi, in the 1780s in Italy, removed metal chains from patients but did not enjoy the same renown bestowed on the more explicitly humanitarian Philippe Pinel who was so visible from late 18th century revolutionary France.

Philippe Pinel started a trend for diagnosing forms of insanity that seemed to occur 'without delerium'.

Philippe Pinel called this Manie sans delire, folie raisonnante or folie lucide raisonnante.

Philippe Pinel described cases who seemed to be overwhelmed by instinctive furious passions but still seemed sane.

Philippe Pinel undertook comparisons of skull sizes, and considered possible physiological substrates, but he was criticized for his emphasis on psychology and the social environment.