Camille Bouchet (1801-1854), un aliéniste saint-simonien

Camille Bouchet (1801-1854) is not amongst the most well-known students of Jean-Etienne Esquirol (1772-1840). However, deeply influenced by the teaching of his master, his search for a cerebral lesion to explain madness led him to be the first to describe hippocampal sclerosis found at autopsy in certain epileptics, although he did not envisage the pathological link. Appointed on the recommendation of Esquirol, a royalist, to the asylum in Nantes, Bouchet planned and successfully brought about the construction of Hôpital Saint-Jacques in this city located west of France. He also set up life within the asylum based on communist ideas, by putting the patients to work and by giving them the status of subjects lacking any personal initiative. This example of introducing ergotherapy in an asylum illustrates a philosophical approach and its contradictions, which were influenced by Saint-Simonianism and republicanism, both of which were drivers for the disillusioning revolutions of 1830 and 1848.