[How Charcot got his chair]

Charcot's career, as is well-known, reached a summit with his acquisition of the Faculty clinical chair of diseases of the nervous system inaugurated in 1882. Based upon previously untapped archival materials at the Charcot Library and the National Archives, this paper explores four questions: I. Was "Charcot's chair" really the first specialized chair for neurology?; 2. Was it founded specifically for Charcot?; 3. What role did the Faculty of Medicine play and did it offer any opposition?; 4. How important was the creation of the chair for the flourishing of the Salpêtrière school. Evidence is presented to show that Charcot considered a specialized chair in nervous diseases a high priority for his career and his school. Sometime around 1880, convinced of the importance of this project, he began to assemble arguments in its behalf from French and foreign sources, particularly from his German colleagues, Westphal and Erb. He learned that there were no precedents, not even in Berlin. Charcot's carefully prepared manuscript memoir presented a strong case for the "necessity" of the chair based on the recent progress and theoretical as well as practical importance of his subject. He described psychiatry, which already had a Faculty clinical chair, as but a "small part" of neuropathology and rejected the idea of combining the two disciplines. Although the project encountered opposition from several Faculty colleagues, who claimed that it was a personal favor for Charcot, powerful support from political allies such as Gambetta and Ferry ensured government funding. In fact, government action in behalf of the creation of the chair for Charcot preceded and surprised the medical Faculty. This paper shows the extent to which Charcot's own initiatives and arguments set the agenda and defined the role he envisaged for the new foundation at the center of the clinical research and teaching centre emerging under his direction at the Salpêtrière.