The chair of mental and brain diseases: Charcot's pupils--Benjamin Ball, Alix Joffroy and Gilbert Ballet

Abstract

Benjamin Ball (1833-1893), Alix Joffroy (1844-1908) and Gilbert Ballet (1853-1916) were three pupils of the great Charcot (1825-1893). They were successive holders of the chair for mental illness and encephalon at its creation in 1877 until the First World War: Benjamin Ball from 1877 to 1893, Alix Joffroy from 1893 to 1908, and Gilbert Ballet from 1908 to 1916. After describing the context surrounding the creation of this chair and the choice of its representative and successors, we will examine their neurological work on the brain derived from a method influenced by a current of thought careful to list the symptoms of the disease and to look for the anatomical causes in the brain. The renowned 19th century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot was a huge influence. With their acquired experience and progress in the fields of morphology and histology and cerebral cortex functioning, they greatly contributed to the evolution of neurological, clinical anatomical and psychological-physiological findings--thus allowing certain pathologies to be considered as organic diseases rather than neurotic symptoms--while all the time recognizing the importance of the cortical cell in mental illness.