"AMBROISE TARDIEU: DRAWINGS OF ALIENEES AMBROISE TARDIEU (17 - Lot 5

Lot n° 5
Go to lot
Estimation :
3000 - 5000 EUR
"AMBROISE TARDIEU: DRAWINGS OF ALIENEES AMBROISE TARDIEU (17 - Lot 5
"AMBROISE TARDIEU: DRAWINGS OF ALIENEES AMBROISE TARDIEU (1788-1841) Of mental illness: sleeping man in a graphite hat 20 x 15 cm. Executed around 1838 COMPARATIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY J.-E. Esquirol and A. Tardieu, Illustration for 'Des maladies mentales considérées sous le rapport médical, hygiénique et médico-légal', Paris, 1838, plate XXII. "In a madhouse, social bonds are broken, habits are changed, friendships cease, trust is destroyed: one acts without decorum, one harms without hating, one obeys out of fear, everyone has his own ideas, his own affections, his own language, having no community of thought, everyone lives alone and for himself, selfishness isolates everything. The language is outraged, false, disordered, as are the thoughts and passions they express. Such an asylum is not exempt from crime: denunciation, slander, conspiracy, the most stupid libertinism, rape, robbery, murder, the son curses his father, the mother slits her children's throats." - J.-E. Esquirol, Des maladies mentales considérées sous le rapport médical, hygiénique et médico-légal, Paris, 1838, vol. I, p. 4 Lots 4, 5 and 6 constitute three unpublished studies for the founding work of French psychiatry, Des maladies mentales... by Jean-Etienne Esquirol, published in 1838. In it, Esquirol details, through three volumes, his observations on 'alienated' behaviour, and considers for the first time madness not as the mark of an unholy diabolical possession, according to the common belief inherited from the medieval era, but as a disease that can be cured. The repercussions of this work were such that it gave rise to the 'Law of the Insane' of 30 June 1838, the first national psychiatric regulation, which obliges every department in France to set up a psychiatric establishment to accommodate the insane. Ambroise Tardieu, official engraver of the Navy's maps and plans, and whose son Ambroise-Auguste is himself a doctor, is chosen by Esquirol to illustrate the work. Esquirol explains
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue