Louis-Florentin Calmeil, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetLouis-Florentin Calmeil
French psychiatrist
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Yversay, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
About Louis-Florentin Calmeil
- Louis-Florentin Calmeil (August 9, 1798 – March 11, 1895) was a French psychiatrist and medical historian born in Yversay.
- He was an assistant to Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol (1772–1840) at Charenton, where he later succeeded Esquirol as director.
- Among his assistants at Charenton was forensic psychiatrist Henri Legrand du Saulle (1830–1886). He is remembered for a work on insanity called "De la folie, considérée sous le point de vue pathologique, philosophique, historique et judiciaire".
- It was one of the first publications dedicated to the history of psychiatry, and was a rational discourse that dealt with topics such as demonology, lycanthropy, religious obsession and other abnormal thought processes.
- The book covered psychiatric issues from the 15th to the 19th century, and is still read today.
- Another important work by Calmeil was an 1826 treatise that discussed general paresis, considered to be the first separately identifiable neuropsychiatric disease entity.
- General paresis was originally described a few years earlier by Antoine Laurent Bayle (1799–1858). Calmeil is credited with introducing the concept of "epileptic absence" for the brief loss of consciousness or confusion observed in epileptic patients.
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