Interplay Between Scientific Theories and Researches on the Diseases of the Nervous System in the Nineteenth-Century, Paris

Abstract

In this paper, my aim is to understand the origin of experimental and scientific models of pathogeny of the diseases of the nervous system in the Salpêtrière (Paris). I will analyse the role of the contexts of cell theory, microscopy and the advances in histological techniques in the creation of various pathogenic models, based on the concept of the cell, the Wallerian degeneration and the neurone concept. I argue that, as medicine and pathology remain autonomous in their methods and goals, because of the evident degree of complexity of diseases, close and reciprocal interactions with sciences, their practices and theories, make it possible to establish convergences between clinical observations, pathological data and those from the experimental models of pathologies. The search for pathogenic models behaves like an engine, which is efficient in assembling facts, in testing pathogeneses and reforming nosologies, combined with the breakthroughs in biology. This paper is a case study showing the emergence of such interactions in the last decades of the nineteenth-century in Paris.

Neuroscience without borders: Preserving the history of neuroscience

“…This controversy re-emerged in Germany and France, in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, with, on one side, the various forms of alternative and unconventional medicine inspired by theosophy and the romantic principles of the Naturphilosophie, and, on the other, the experimental achievements and theoretical elaborations of experimental scientists of the calibre of Hermann von Helmholtz, Emil du Bois Reymond, Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow, Claude Bernard, and the French school of Jean-Martin Charcot (Barbara, 2009). A modern neuroscientist with a historical perspective could face the challenge of new forms of alternative (and often nonscientific) medical practices flourishing in medicine today on a…”