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Valentin Magnan (1835-1916) Volume 79, issue 3, Mars 2003

Author
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Valentin Magnan, the first "Admissions" doctor at the Saint-Anne hospital in Paris, distinguished himself as the greatest psychiatrist of his time. At once an experimental scientist, a theoretician, a prestigious clinician, a teacher and classifier, the "French exception" is indebted to him for descriptions of " bouffées délirantes (acute delirious episodes)" and " délire chronique systématique (routine chronic delusional state)". His attachment to the "laicised" notion of "degeneration" was the object of a misunderstanding through misguided historical hindsight. A humanist doctor, Magnan’s idea was to use this concept to bring back assistance to those whose lessened aptitudes were in danger of making of them "life’s losers". Far from anticipating the approaching Eugenic ideology, Magnan was in fact the main force behind the modernisation of asylums. He caused straightjackets and isolation cells to be proscribed and psychological supportive care to be practiced at the bedside of the acute patient.