La Salpêtrière Hospital before Charcot: a visit described by Pedro González Velasco

Under Charcot's leadership, La Salpêtrière was transformed into one of the world's top neurology centres. However, there is little information regarding the patient care facilities which Charcot would have encountered upon his arrival in 1862.

A paper published in 1860 by Spanish physician Pedro González Velasco following a visit to that famous hospital is a valuable testimony to the quality of patient care just prior to Charcot's arrival. Although it essentially praises the institution, the article also describes the largely unsatisfactory conditions endured by patients with severe mental disorders, epilepsy and paralysis, who were locked inside cages with simple straw pallets on the floor for beds and open holes for toilets. Rather than an alienist, Velasco was a well-known surgeon and passionate advocate of positivism. As a personal friend and hospital fellow of Jose Maria Esquerdo's, with similar political affiliations, he had first-hand knowledge of the struggle to improve neuropsychiatric care in Madrid.

Publishing his paper ultimately provided Velasco with a pretext for denouncing the deplorable care conditions endured by similar patients in Hospital General de Madrid. Meanwhile, Charcot would go on to improve the living conditions of inpatients at La Salpêtrière and found the specialty of neurology.