Jules-Étienne Mitivié (1796-1871)

Jules-Étienne Mitivié (1796-1871), belongs to the circle of students of Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol (1772-1840), his uncle. Aliéniste at La Salpêtrière Hospital, he is associated with Esquirol in the foundation of the famous health house of Ivry. Fine clinician, fully devoted to his patients, his fame did not survive him, he left no treat mental illnesses. However, history can recognize him to have considered, first, the tuberculous etiology of the table he calls “Acute hydrocephalus” in his doctoral thesis, that is to say, tuberculous meningitis. The diagnostic foresight of Mitivié is also illustrated during a case of possible internment abuse, the case Rouy, during which he is the only alienist to deny the reality of madness and sign the end of internment.