Mind and Body in the Clinic: Philippe Pinel, Alexander Crichton, Dominique Esquirol, and the Birth of Psychiatry

The vast seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature about mind and body derives its major themes from philosophers trained in medicine. John Locke discussed sensation and reflection while David Hartley explored the association of ideas. Julien Offray de La Mettrie depicted the body as a machine and Georges Cabanis envisioned the brain as an organ that secretes thought, just as the stomach processes food. All these men were practicing physicians.¹ Materialistic philosophy motivated many medical investigators of mental functions to study the bodily substrate of human thought and emotion: from Thomas Willis to Gall and Spurzheim, they dissected and scrutinized nerves and