Georges Gilles de la Tourette, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Georges Gilles de la Tourette

French physician

Date of Birth: 30-Oct-1857

Place of Birth: Saint-Gervais-les-Trois-Clochers, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France

Date of Death: 26-May-1904

Profession: psychiatrist, physician writer, neurologist

Nationality: France

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio


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About Georges Gilles de la Tourette

  • Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette (French pronunciation: ?[???? alb?? edwa? b?ytys ?il d? la tu??t]; 30 October 1857 – 26 May 1904) was a French physician and the namesake of Tourette's syndrome, a neurological condition characterized by physical and verbal tics.
  • He was born in the small town of Saint-Gervais-les-Trois-Clochers in the district of Châtellerault, near the city of Loudun.
  • He could be retrospectively classified as a neurologist, but the field did not exist in his time. During 1873 Tourette began medical studies at Poitiers.
  • He later relocated to Paris where he became a student, amanuensis, and house physician of his mentor, the influential contemporary neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, director of the SalpĂŞtrière Hospital.
  • Charcot also helped him to advance in his academic career.
  • Tourette studied and lectured in psychotherapy, hysteria and medical and legal ramifications of mesmerism (modern-day hypnosis).Tourette described the symptoms of Tourette's syndrome in nine patients in 1884, using the name "maladie des tics".
  • Charcot renamed the syndrome "Gilles de la Tourette's illness" in his honor.In 1893, a former female patient shot Tourette in the head, claiming he had hypnotized her against her will.
  • Both Tourette and many modern hypnologists state that this is impossible.
  • His mentor, Charcot, had died recently, and his young son had also died recently.
  • After these events, Tourette began to experience mood swings between depression and hypomania.
  • Nevertheless, he organized public lectures in which he spoke about literacy, mesmerism and theatre.Tourette published an article on hysteria in the German Army, which angered Bismarck, and a further article about unhygienic conditions in the floating hospitals on the river Thames.
  • With Gabriel LeguĂ© he analyzed abbess Jeanne des Anges' account of her hysteria that was allegedly based on her unrequited love for a priest Urbain Grandier, who was later burned for witchcraft.Around 1902, Tourette's condition worsened and he was dismissed from his post.
  • Gilles de la Tourette died on 26 May 1904 in a psychiatric hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland.

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