Valentin Magnan, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetValentin Magnan
French psychiatrist
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Perpignan, Languedoc-Roussillon, France
About Valentin Magnan
- Valentin Magnan (16 March 1835 – 27 September 1916) was a French psychiatrist who was a native of Perpignan. He studied medicine in Lyon and Paris, where he was a student of Jules Baillarger (1809–1890) and Jean-Pierre Falret (1794–1870).
- From 1867 to the end of his career he was associated with the HĂ´pital Sainte-Anne in Paris.
- At Sainte-Anne, he was a long-time colleague to Gustave Bouchereau (1835–1900).Magnan was an influential figure in French psychiatry in the latter half of the 19th century.
- He is remembered for expanding the concept of degeneration that was first introduced into psychiatry by Bénédict Augustin Morel (1809–1873).
- Magnan's theory of degeneration was a form of "evolutionary biology" that was based on an hereditary precept.
- He used terms such as bouffée délirante (transitory delusional psychosis) and délire chronique évolution systématique (chronic systemized delusional disorder) as descriptive categories of mental illness.
- In 1892 with psychiatrist Paul Sérieux (1864–1947), he published a monograph on the latter mental state titled Le délire chronique a évolution systématique. Magnan believed that the prodigious use of alcohol, particularly absinthe, was a major factor in what he perceived was a decline of French culture.
- In his investigations of absinthe he tried to establish a particular "absinthe effect" that wasn't present in other forms of alcohol, and suggested that the delirium of absinthe was different from delirium tremens experienced in alcoholism.
- In his research with laboratory animals, Magnan used essence of absinthe (wormwood), rather than the beverage itself, which contains only a small percentage of wormwood.
- From his experiments he observed that animals experienced epileptiform convulsions when exposed to concentrated levels of wormwood.
Read more at Wikipedia