Background
Pinel was born on April 20, 1745 in Jonquières, France. His mother, Élisabeth Dupuy, came from a family that had since the seventeenth century produced a number of physicians, apothecaries, and surgeons.
Dr. Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière, 1795 by Tony Robert-Fleury. Pinel ordering the removal of chains from patients at the Paris Asylum for insane women.
Dr. Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière, 1795 by Tony Robert-Fleury. Pinel ordering the removal of chains from patients at the Paris Asylum for insane women.
Monument à Philippe Pinel, Paris XIII
Pinel was born on April 20, 1745 in Jonquières, France. His mother, Élisabeth Dupuy, came from a family that had since the seventeenth century produced a number of physicians, apothecaries, and surgeons.
Despite this medical heritage, Pinel’s early education, first at the College de Lavaur and then at the College de l’ Esquille in Toulouse, was an essentially literary one; he was greatly influenced by the Encyclopedists, particularly Rousseau. Having decided upon a career in religion, he enrolled in the Faculty of Theology at Toulouse in July 1761; in April 1770, however, he left it for the Faculty of Medicine, from which he received the M. D. on 21 December 1773. Simultaneously with his medical training, Pinel studied mathematics, an interest that is apparent in his medical writings.
Arriving in Paris (1778), Philippe Pinel 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.
He followed Christianity from his birth. But he never involved himself in any religious movements. Pinel removed himself from religious perspectives, and in certainty considered that over the top religiosity could be destructive.
Pinel for the most part communicated warm sentiments and admiration for his patients, as exemplified by: "I can't however give excited observer to their ethical qualities. Never, with the exception of in sentiments, have I seen mates more qualified to be loved, more delicate fathers, energetic mates, purer or more charitable nationalists, than I have found in healing facilities for the crazy, in their interims of sensibility and quiet; a man of sensibility may go there quickly and enjoy scenes of empathy and delicacy. He took an ethical position himself with respect to what he thought to be rationally sound and socially suitable. In addition, he in some cases demonstrated a harsh tone toward what he considered individual failings or bad habit, for instance taking note of in 1809: "On one side one sees families which flourish over a course of numerous years, in the chest of request and harmony, on the other one sees numerous others, particularly in the lower social classes, who irritate the eye with the horrible picture of depravity, contentions, and disgraceful misery!" He goes ahead to depict this as the most productive wellspring of estrangement requiring treatment, including that while some such cases were an a sound representative for humankind numerous others are "a disrespect to mankind!
Quotations: "It is an art of no little importance to administer medicines properly: but, it is an art of much greater and more difficult acquisition to know when to suspend or altogether to omit them."
Académie de Médecin
Physical Characteristics: Philippe Pinel was wheatish in complexion and had white hair. He was as medium tall and had a normal built.
His first spouse kicked the bucket in 1811, and in 1815 he wedded Marie-Madeline Jacquelin-Lavallée.