Charles Lasègue
1816–1883 · French physician specialising in psychiatry and neurology
Ernest-Charles Lasègue (Paris, 1816–1883) was a French physician whose work centred on psychiatry and neurology, within the clinical tradition of nineteenth-century French medicine. Before turning to medicine he had taught philosophy at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. It was hearing the lectures of Armand Trousseau that led him to study medicine.
He earned his doctorate in 1847 and soon after the French government sent him to southern Russia to investigate a cholera epidemic. He worked at the Salpêtrière, Pitié and Necker hospitals, and eventually held the chair of clinical medicine at Necker. He published more than a hundred papers, many of them with Trousseau, and served as an editor of the Archives générales de médecine.
His thinking is marked by careful attention to the detailed history of each patient and by the view that psychiatry and physiology are complementary disciplines. He presented persecutory delusions as a disorder in its own right, described hysterical anorexia, and, together with Falret, introduced the notion of folie à deux. His name also survives in the sign that bears it, used to help diagnose sciatica and disc herniation.
His influence endures in modern psychiatry, above all in its clinical vocabulary, where the term folie à deux is still in use.
Key ideas
- Detailed clinical history: a careful record of the patient's life is essential to understanding mental illness.
- Complementary psychiatry and physiology: the two disciplines need each other to explain psychological disorders.
- Persecutory delusions: he argued they formed a distinct disorder and divided them into general and partial forms.
- Folie à deux: he described how a delusion can pass from one psychotic person to a closely connected, apparently healthy one through communication between them.
- Hysterical anorexia: he framed it as a psychological condition tied to family dynamics, in which food intake gradually declines.
Curiosities
A late English translation
His 1877 work on folie à deux, written with Falret, was not translated into English until 1964, although it was cited for years before that.
A sign named after him
The sign that bears his name is credited to a 1881 description by his student Forst, although Lasègue was the one who stressed its diagnostic value.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.