[Charcot, discoverer of diseases]

Nowadays, one hundred years following Charcot's death (1893), neurologists remember his original contributions in the field of neurological disorders. The aim of this work is to assess the extraordinary Charcot's ability to create new diseases outside the field of neurology, mainly in internal medicine and in geriatric disorders. A good way to evaluate his abilities is to compare the state of medical knowledge before and after Charcot. Before, "chronic rheumatic disease" was not distinguished from gout and shaking falsy was confused with other tremors occurring in the elderly. Among vascular cerebral diseases ("apoplexy"), physicians could not recognize those following a bleeding process from those induced by an ischaemic brain disease. After Charcot's papers, these various disorders were better known and well defined from their pathology, aetiology and mechanisms. According to his obsessive personality, Charcot liked classifying and labeling diseases. Some nosographic frameworks were nevertheless inappropriate. Thus, in the field of joint disorders, Charcot included in the same pathological entity ("chronic rheumatic disease") various arthropathies such as rheumatic arthritis and osteo-arthritis. In France, this mistake hindered the understanding of the mechanism of these diseases. Though Charcot made mistakes when he described new pathological disorders, these mistakes were of little consequence, compared to the importance of his main nosologic contributions. As a whole, Charcot's scientific methodology seemed to be accurate and successful.