Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

The department which occupies the southern extremity of La Salpêtrière is the one specially devoted to lunatics. Placed at the head of the establishment in 1795, Pinel introduced at this hospital the same beneficent reforms with which he had already endowed Bicêtre. He at once did away with the chains, fetters, and irons with which, until his time, the patients were loaded, and he filled up the subterranean dungeons in which unhappy women, half naked, had often had their feet gnawed by rats, or frozen by the cold of winter. From 1818 to 1836 Esquirol, pupil, disciple, and friend of Pinel, introduced new modifications to soften the lot of the deranged.

Connected with La Salpêtrière are many interesting traditions. During its earliest days St. Vincent de Paul ministered constantly to the patients. Here Bossuet, on the 29th of June, 1657, pronounced his panegyric on St. Paul, one of the masterpieces of Christian eloquence. Here was confined in 1788 the mysterious personage calling herself Madame de Donhault, whose identity has never been established, and who is known in judicial annals as the “WOMAN WITHOUT A NAME,” or “THE SHAM MARCHIONESS.” Here, too, was shut up the widow and accomplice of the famous poisoner, Desrues, massacred with thirty-five other prisoners on the 4th of September, 1792. Two other women who played in the world two very different parts died at La Salpêtrière: Théroigne de Méricourt, at the age of fifty-seven, after eighteen years of wild illusions, and Mdlle. Quino.

The Salpêtrière has been the cradle of important physical and psychological studies in connection with brain diseases. These have sometimes taken a slightly fantastic form, as when Esquirol and his nephew, Dr. Miture, endeavoured to cure madness by the most agreeable remedies—the former prescribing music, the latter champagne. Rostan and Georget in 1822 made at La Salpêtrière experiments in animal magnetism, which attracted much attention in the scientific world, especially as regards two subjects, now well known in the history of somnabulism: the young Petronilla, and the widow Brouillard, nicknamed Braquette, whose clairvoyance was some years later put to a delicate test by three mischievous house surgeons, MM. Dechambre, Diday, and Debrou. A number of interesting and very important experiments in the new science (or old science under a new name) of hypnotism have been made by Charcot and his pupils at this institution. Here, too, a close examination and analysis of the cerebral manifestations of the insane led some subtle anatomist to the conclusion that genius was but a form of insanity. There was one physician of La Salpêtrière, M. Lélut, member of the Chamber of Deputies, and of the Institute, who, in two remarkable works, endeavoured to prove that in the minds of Socrates and of Pascal there was, at least, a touch of madness. Another learned physician, attached during the Louis Philippe period to the Salpêtrière, M. Trélat—described by Dr. Linas as “an excellent man, ex-minister, and not a member of the Legion of Honour”—wrote a book, which may be classed with the one just named, on “Lucid Madness.”

Bicêtre, an asylum of the same character as La Salpêtrière, derives its name from the familiar Winchester. On the site of Bicêtre, in the year of grace 1284, Jean de Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester, built near Paris a manor house, which, after the name of his see, he called Winchester, soon corrupted into Wicester, which, by a further process of corruption, became successively Bicestre and Bicêtre. After going through various hands, and at last passing into the king’s possession, Bicêtre was given in 1656 by Louis XIV. to be turned into a hospital for old men above the age of seventy, lame and incurable children, the blind, the paralytic, the imbecile, and the epileptic, together with women of dissolute life, who were to be received only on condition of being corrected, whipped, and fed on bread and water.

At the period of the Revolution Bicêtre was at once a hospital, an asylum, a prison, and a house of correction, until, in 1791, it became at the same time a madhouse. The lunatics were at first mixed up with the criminals, or confined in horrible dungeons, but at length the[{212}] intelligent and benevolent Pinel broke their chains. It was only in 1812, however, that the lunatics were placed in a special compartment, separate at once from the criminals and from the patients. Bicêtre continued to be a prison until 1836, when it became simply a hospital. At present the dungeons of former days are used as store-rooms for provisions and drugs.

PLACE DE CONSEIL, SALPÊTRIÈRE.

Bicêtre is a little beyond the fortifications on the road to Fontainebleau. An avenue, lined with eating houses and taverns, so plentiful at all the Barriers, leads to the principal entrance, which is surmounted by a royal escutcheon with this inscription, “Hospice de la Vieillesse—Hommes.” It is inhabited by some 3,000 persons, comprising more than four hundred officials and servants, upwards of 1,500 indigent persons, between fifty and sixty convalescents, 1,830 adult lunatics, and 120 epileptic and idiotic children. The annual cost of the establishment amounts to one million and a half francs.

Bicêtre, like the Salpêtrière, is divided into departments: the Hospice on the north, where the aged and infirm of the city of Paris are gratuitously received; and the Asile, on the south, intended for the lunatics of the Department of the Seine. Like the Salpêtrière, it has more the character of a town than of a single building. Without any pretension to architecture, Bicêtre is composed of wings, outgrowths, and “annexes” of various kinds, added and super-added to the original and central structure. The shops attached to the establishment are now limited to a grocer’s and a tobacconist’s. There was formerly a shop for the sale of alcoholic drinks; but the intemperance of the customers caused the administration to banish for ever its estimable proprietor. For similar reasons the strictest regulations have been affixed to the door of the still-existing canteen.