[Tics: from Itard to the neuroleptics]

When the six DSM-III (1980) diagnostic criteria are applied to the nine cases reported by Gilles de la Tourette in 1885, six of them are found to be in accordance with the diagnosis of Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome (cases nos 4, 5 and 7 do not involve vocal tics). Gilles de la Tourette deserves credit, not only for having regrouped fragmented observations into one remarkably well described clinical entity which held over time (such as Itard's observations nos 9 and 10 in 1825; the latter is the famous Marquise of D ... seen several times by Charcot and the only one which, along with no 1, appears in Gilles de la Tourette's paper), but also for having described the course of this chronic and fluctuating disease. Why Gilles de la Tourette did not use the term "tic", a term which had been in use for a long time in both veterinary and human medicine, to describe "the motor incoordination" of these patients? Did Charcot take some distance from his student's paper as early as 1885? He viewed tics as the basis of "the disease described by Gilles de la Tourette". In addition to coprolalia and echolalia, he alsa reported the existence of "mental tics". How have French neurologists and psychiatrists been able to perpetuate Brissaud's error who, contrary to Gilles de la Tourette, mentioned that the illness "can be associated with severe mental disorders which often lead to dementia"?(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)