[Portrait of Jean Martin Charcot]

Throughout paintings, engravings, and photography, Charcot's face and his life at the Salepêtrière have become widely known. More importantly, his biographers and those who wrote about their firsthand experiences with Charcot have brought to life his authority and his penetrating eye. Charcot held his students, his patients, and all those in close contact with him under a despotic rule. His shyness and emotions hid behind a cold and impenetrable mask. Much has been written about Charcot's life at the Salpêtrière. He transformed the old hospice into an institute of neurology considered internationally as a model, and its fame attracted visitors and patients from around the world. He formed a school at the Salpêtrière composed of his many students. These young men gathered each Tuesday evening in the luxurious reception halls of his mansion on Boulevard Saint-Germain. There they mixed with writers, artists, and politicians who were firmly republican and anticlerical. There is only information on Charcot's early years other than the major dates of his career and a few legends. Arriving at the Salpêtrière in 1862, he created the foundations of neurology over the next decade by applying the anatomoclinical method. Built on the traditions of the French anamatopathological method, his system was adapted by Charcot to incorporate the new advances in microscopy and cellular pathology. Later in his career, he also directed a scientific effort towards psychophysiologic explorations of hysteria and hypnosis, some inciting severe criticism. This judgement has been revised and in its place there remains the boldness of an innovative mind. His neurological achievement remains undisputed.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)