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PHILIPPE PINEL, 
 
 Oi' France. 
 y 
 CIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, COURAGE, HUMANITY, ALL IN. 
 ONE PERSON. 
 
 PROFOUND HONOR ANH (IRATITUDE FROM 
 AN AMERICAN CITIZEN. 
 
 J. M. B. 
 
 ^ASTBR, April lO, 1898. 
 

 15? ^f 
 
DR. PHILIPPE PINEL. 
 
 Born April 20, 1745, in the Department of Tarn, France. 
 His father and his uncle were medical men. After fin- 
 ishing his classical studies at Lavaur, he went to Tou- 
 louse, where he took his doctorate in 1773. Then to 
 Montpellier, where he was obliged to give lessons in mathe- 
 matics for his living. In 1778 he went to Paris, Being 
 ersed in English, he translated several great works in that 
 nguage, and contributed to periodicals of medical science. 
 ) enlarge the sphere of his knowledge, he made studies 
 ' zoology and comparative anatomy. It was then, proba- 
 , that he attracted the attention of Cuvier, who pro- 
 anced the dloge upon him at his death. Shortly after 
 applied himself diligently to the study of mental alicna- 
 i n. He now published several works on this subject, 
 especially "Traits McMico-philosophique de I'Alie'nation 
 Mentale." His ability in these studies caused him to be 
 appointed chief of the BicOtre, and in 1794 of the Salp^- 
 Iriere, the two asylums for the insane in Paris. He con- 
 tinued to publish. But not as a lecturer or author did he 
 achieve his greatest success. Science soon passes away, 
 but philosophical courage and humanity never. They are 
 immortal. Braving the opposition of the tinuil and con- 
 
servative, he was among the first to introduce among the 
 unfortunates the rights of humanity. He took off with his 
 own hands the chains by which they had been bound to 
 the walls, and substituted methods of sweetness, goodness, 
 and justice, with the happiest results. 
 
 It may be said of him, as it was said of Montesquieu, 
 " Admire des Sgavans par I'etendue de ses lumieres, et 
 cheri de tous par sa tendresse pour I'humanite, il prouva k 
 I'univers entier que s'il est des hommes qui font des maux 
 qui durent plus qu'eux, il en est d'autres qui font des biens 
 qui ne finissent jamais." 
 
 He died in Paris, Oct. 26, 1826. — Encydopadia Britan- 
 7iica. 
 
 In 1879 ^ ^^^ ^^ pleasure of visiting the Salon in Paris, 
 where I saw the celebrated painting by Robert Fleury 
 (Tony) of Dr. Pinel's visit to the insane in the Bicetre. 
 He was represented taking off the chains from the patients, 
 assisted by a blacksmith. The figures were life-size, most 
 effectively drawn and colored. The contrast between the 
 humane and virile form of the doctor and the wretched 
 beings before and about him was most effective. It com- 
 memorated one of the great epochs in the history of human- 
 ity. I was deeply affected by it. 
 
 Mr. C. Inman Barnard, now residing in Paris, has sent 
 me a photograph of this great painting, a reduction of 
 which is given in this pamphlet. 
 
 Rev. Francis Tiffany has prepared a memoir of the 
 
5 
 
 great Frenchman, which is printed herewith ; and I am sure 
 that every one who reads it will admire the ability and thor- 
 oughness with which he has done his work. 
 
 Dr. Pinel's work was taken up by Dr. Jacobi of Ger- 
 many ; by the Quaker Tukes of York, Drs. Charlesworth, 
 Conolly, and Gaskell, in various asylums in England ; by 
 Drs. Woodward, Stedman, Tyler, Channing, Weir Mitchell, 
 Cole, and others in America. Miss Dorothea Di.x de- 
 manded and brought about a new epoch in the asylums for 
 the insane in the United States. 
 
 All of these date back to Pinel. 
 
 To appreciate what he did, it is only necessary to 
 compare an old asylum, as shown in the photograph, 
 with the McLean Asylum of to-day at Waverley. Every 
 family in America is indebted to Pinel for this great im- 
 provement ; for they are all more or less, directly or in- 
 lirectly, touched by this fearful, mysterious malady. It is 
 meet, therefore, that his memory should not perish from 
 among us or be confmed to specialists. This must be my 
 excuse for my humble offering. Admirable as the treatment 
 now is in our most civilized communities, I do not learn 
 that any very great discoveries or reform have been made 
 in the knowledge or treatment of the disease during the 
 century. 
 
 'I'his may be owing to my ignorance and very retired life. 
 It seems to me that we may take hope for something better 
 from the further development of the X-ray system, reveal- 
 
ing to us the contents of the " closed box " ; from the Gheel 
 system, in place of large asylums ; and from the practica- 
 bility of home treatment, with a better knowledge of the 
 physiology of the brain. That there is a good deal of dis- 
 satisfaction with things as they are is evident from the fre- 
 quent articles in the newspapers, and by the occurrence 
 of such painful stories as that coming from the Waterbury 
 [Vermont] Asylum. 
 
 Meantime let us look earnestly and trustingly into the 
 future for the coming of another man of genius. 
 
 J. M. B. 
 June 22, 1898. 
 
PHILIPPE PINEL. 
 
 A SKETCH. 
 
 BY FRANCIS TIFFANY. 
 
 Among the champions in the heroic struggle of man 
 with the ignorance, misery, and diseases that oppress 
 his lot, a few shining names will ever arrest the eye 
 above the lustre of the rest, as the more splendid con- 
 stellations of the sky pale the light of their countless 
 starry mates. On this elect few the special grace has 
 been conferred of inaugurating a new epoch, and thus 
 of marking a distinct dividing line between the past 
 and the future. 
 
 In chemistry such an epoch was ushered in through 
 Priestley's discovery of oxygen ; in mechanics, through 
 Watt's invention of the steam-engine. Kqually true 
 has this held of the healing art. The day was wlicn 
 all Kuropc was ravaged by the frightful scourge of 
 small-pox. With the advent of Jenner, the fell disease, 
 terrible as the Black Death, was literally stamped 
 out. The day was when the operating-room of every 
 hospital was a scene hideous as the torture chambers 
 
8 
 
 of the Inquisition. With the advent of Jackson 
 and Morton, every scream was hushed, and the 
 surgical table transformed into a bed of dreamless 
 sleep. Once again the day was when asylums for the 
 insane— mad-houses, as they were called — were literal 
 hells that beggared the imaginations of Dante's In- 
 ferno, ringing night and day with the clanking of 
 chains and the yells and execrations of frenzied ma- 
 niacs. With the advent of Pinel came a "Peace, be 
 still ! " and they were changed into the orderly, quiet, 
 and beautiful retreats we see to-day. 
 
 In the frontispiece of this sketch of one of mankind's 
 greatest benefactors, Philippe Pinel, is drawn the pict- 
 ure of an actual scene that strikes the keynote of as 
 signal a triumph as earth ever saw of enlightened 
 reason, courage, and mercy over ignorance and bru- 
 tality. The picture was painted after Pinel's death, 
 and hung in memorial tribute to him on the walls of 
 the Academy of Medicine in Paris. 
 
 Calmly self-possessed stands the wise and merciful 
 physician, ordering the chains to be struck off from 
 the wrists and ankles of what was lately a mob of 
 raving maniacs,— an act looked upon by the bravest of 
 his associates as no whit less insane than wrenching 
 away the bars from the cages of a menagerie of tigers. 
 Yet in it lay in fruitful germ the secret of a no less 
 
than Copernican revolution in medical theory and prac- 
 tice. The command sprang out of no mere impulsive 
 instinct of mercy, but was the calm result of years of 
 deliberate reflection, the simple outcome of what Mil- 
 ton calls "that formidable independence begotten of 
 converse with truth." 
 
 These wretched and outcast beings, they were not wild 
 beasts: they were men, women, and, alas ! too often, chil- 
 dren, with something quick and vital not in the wild 
 beast, to appeal to, — a lingering ray of reason, a surviv- 
 ing instinct of gratitude to whoever would help them, a 
 not yet extinct sense of moral responsibility, a recuper- 
 ative energy of sanity. In these slumbering forces 
 Pinel believed with the sublime courage of a rational 
 faith nothing could shake. To him the things that 
 were seen — the shrickings and frenzies — were tem- 
 poral: the things that were unseen — the enduring 
 bases of health, self-control, reason, and love — were 
 eternal. You have called insanity a devil, and have 
 fought that devil with fire, thus but adding flames 
 to his fury. Insanity is disease, as essentially as typhus 
 or consumption ; in one of its forms a fierce inflam- 
 mation, as naturally setting the brain afire as it might 
 the lungs or any other tissue of the body, but with 
 reactions attaching to brain alone. Who of you but 
 in croup or lyjihoid has seen his child temporarily 
 
10 
 
 delirious, out of his head, you say ? Do you chain up 
 your raving little one, seek to drive him back to reason 
 from his terrors and shriekings with blows ? The 
 whole method in vogue in our mad-houses is a relic of 
 ignorance and barbarity. They are manufactories of 
 madness, not merciful retreats for its healing. 
 
 It is easy enough to say all this to-day, — as easy as, 
 now that Columbus has showed the way, to cross the 
 Atlantic in a shallop, and be sure of solid land on the 
 other side. But to say and act upon it, in the face of 
 what Pinel had to confront, demanded courage of the 
 firmest temper, — courage of reason, courage of human- 
 ity. Yet it was at the period of the wildest frenzies of 
 the French Revolution that this act at once of clearest 
 sanity and tenderest compassion had its birth-hour, at 
 the very period when the sole surviving faith of the 
 nation seemed centred in the violence of mobs, the 
 furious proscriptions of national assemblies, the sav- 
 agery of public executions. 
 
 To bring before the imagination a vivid picture of 
 what a public insane asylum meant in the day when 
 Pinel received his first appointment to the charge of 
 the Bicetre, it is only needful to read the description 
 the great scientist Pariset gave, in his " Eloge de 
 Pinel," — a description substantially reproduced by 
 Esquirol and Cuvicr in their last tributes to this granc 
 
II 
 
 benefactor of his race. " Vice, crime, misfortune, in- 
 firmity, diseases the most varied and the most revolt- 
 ing, all were heaped together and treated alike. The 
 buildings were untenantable. Men crouched there cov- 
 ered with filth, in cells of stone, narrow, cold, drip- 
 ping, without air or light, and furnished only with a 
 litter of straw, rarely renewed and soon infected, — 
 hideous lairs in which one would have hesitated to shut 
 up the vilest animal. The insane, thrown into these 
 sewers, were at the mercy of their keepers ; and their 
 keepers were malefactors from the prisons. The 
 wretched patients were loaded with chains and tied 
 with ropes like convicts. Handed over thus to the 
 cruelty of their guardians, they were made the butt of 
 insulting raillery or of blind and wanton brutality. 
 The injustice of their savage treatment transported 
 them with rage : and despair and wrath inflaming their 
 deranged minds, drew from them night and day cries 
 and bowlings that rendered still more dreadful the 
 clanking of their chains. Some, more patient or more 
 cunning, showed themselves insensible to such out- 
 rages ; but they only concealed their frenzy, to gratify 
 it more surely. They watched with their eyes the 
 movements of their tormentors till, surprising them in 
 a helpless attitude, they struck them with blows of 
 their chains on (he head or stomach, antl dashed them 
 
12 
 
 dying at their feet. Thus ferocity on one side and 
 murder on the other!" 
 
 In the light of to-day, it is hard to read a description 
 like this without the temptation to stigmatize in the 
 fiercest language the brutality of the past. In no 
 such mood of wrath, however, is opened the way for 
 appreciating the supremacy of reason, the patience 
 of love, the serene command of remedial resources, 
 borne witness to in a sublime innovator like Pinel. 
 The most piteous feature in the long tragic story 
 of madness is the terrible logic with which this fell 
 scourge has been found to excite exasperation and 
 the instinct of violence and cruelty in the mind of 
 sanity itself. In the moral world insanity is what the 
 earthquake is in the physical. The steadfast founda- 
 tion on which every act of rational will is based is 
 suddenly overthrown; and, in either case, physically 
 or mentally, men stagger to and fro, and are at their 
 wits' end. 
 
 More than this, insanity not only exasperates reason, 
 but it frightens it, paralyzes it, transports it into an 
 alien world, assails it with superstitious terrors. The 
 very brutes taken out of the hulks and installed as 
 keepers in the Bicetre would have been far less cruel 
 in charge of fellow-convicts ; for they would have en- 
 countered in them some basis of recognition of the 
 
13 
 
 relation between command and obedience, penalty and 
 orderly conduct. But here, driven wild by midnight 
 bowlings that would not suffer an hour of sleep, by 
 stark delusions proof against every rational word, by 
 filthy habits and tearings off of clothes that no lash- 
 ings would eradicate, — these brutal keepers fell back 
 on the wild-beast theory of their calling, and saw in 
 themselves but so many tiger and catamount tamers 
 in a menagerie. From their level to the sublime ele- 
 vation in scientific reason, psychologic insight, patient, 
 persistent love of a Pinel, is to be measured the vast 
 abyss between the old system and the new. 
 
 Who, then, was this wonder-working Philippe Pinel ? 
 What his origin, education, cast of mind ? What his 
 special training, type of intellect and character, emo- 
 tional temperament? His tastes, habits of life, rela- 
 tions with the world, — what were they? Surely, if 
 there is such a sentiment as natural gratitude to the 
 benefactors of the race, all should desire to know some- 
 thing of this man. In a world in which at any hour an 
 accidental fall on the ice, a wreck of fortune, an intem- 
 perate fit of study, a harrowing bereavement, may 
 plunge any one into at least temporary insanity, who 
 would not consecrate in the heart a grateful shrine to 
 the benefactor who outright changed the lurid hand- 
 writing over the portal of every BicOtre in France or 
 
14 
 
 Bedlam in England,— "All hope abandon ye who enter 
 here," into the inscription over so many a blessed re- 
 treat of to-day, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
 are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest " ? 
 
 Philippe Pinel was born April 20, 1745, during a 
 temporary absence of his mother from St. Paul, at 
 St. Andr^, France. His father was a country doctor, 
 poor and with five children to support, whose early 
 education he cared for by hiring a private tutor. 
 
 From the start the boy developed the student tem- 
 perament, and was by nature grave, recluse, and de- 
 vouringly intellectual. Sent at the age of thirteen to 
 Lavour to the College des Doctrinaires, he took such 
 distinguished rank in the humanities as later, under 
 the direction of a professor, to be employed in teaching 
 his fellow -pupils logic, ethics, and metaphysics. It 
 seemed at first that his destination would be the 
 Church, to which the benevolence and piety of his 
 mind strongly inclined him. Indeed, when at home 
 on vacations, he conducted the religious services of 
 the family as a kind of household priest. The fasci- 
 nation, however, of the natural sciences steadily gained 
 power over his mind ; and he resolved to devote him- 
 self to the medical profession. 
 
 With this in view, young Pinel went for study to 
 Toulouse at the age of seventeen. He was poor, and 
 
15 
 
 his father could do nothing to help him. So he sup- 
 plied his own scant needs through lessons in mathe- 
 matics. It was little outwardly he required. His 
 "mind his kingdom was" ; and, with the passion of a 
 universal student, he felt in no haste to shorten the 
 days of acquisition and get into practical life. A pro- 
 found classical scholar and endowed with poetic sensi- 
 bilities of the rarest kind, much of his time was spent 
 over his yEschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, and Plato, as 
 well as over Virgil and Horace. He read deeply into 
 history, ancient and modern, and mastered the English 
 language. His geometrical studies he pushed so far 
 and in so original a way as later to command the admi- 
 ration of experts. Thus not till the mature age of 
 twenty-nine did he receive his doctorate of medicine. 
 To open up to himself still wider opportunities, I'incl 
 later on changed his residence to Montpcllier, then one 
 j of the most famous schools of medicine in France. 
 ] There he attempted to begin professional practice, but 
 j was again thrown back for support on lessons in math- 
 f ematics. However, nothing daunted, he absorbed him- 
 / self in studies in comparative anatomy and physiology 
 ' and on the application of scientific analysis to the 
 ^ classification of human diseases. So far nothing gave 
 promise of the daring innovator he was ultimately to 
 become, — the successful practitioner consulted from 
 
i6 
 
 every quarter of Europe, the man decorated and titled 
 by all learned societies. Nor is the reason for this far 
 to seek. 
 
 In his eulogy pronounced on Pinel, the world-re- 
 nowned Cuvier contrasts the hardihood of spirit dis- 
 played by his subject in applying to medicine methods 
 as rigid as those of geometers, and in carrying into his 
 language the precision of the naturalist, with the ex- 
 treme reserve and timidity of his nature in confronting 
 the outside world. "It was this," he adds, "which 
 kept him so long back from the success and ascend- 
 ency which were his due." 
 
 We strike here on a deep-seated element in Pinel's 
 nature, — an extreme of sensibility, which, in contrast 
 with the world's rough-and-ready ways, put him at 
 grave disadvantage : often paralyzing his great powers 
 and enabling unspeakably inferior men to impress 
 themselves on the common mind as his superiors. 
 Alongside with this went that habitual abstraction of 
 the profound student, which in common language is 
 derided as being "'way off in Egypt," when one ought 
 to be on hand now and here. Even as a boy, Pinel 
 himself narrates how he would sometimes go hunting 
 with his father; but the sight of the dead or wounded 
 game so distressed him that he would take along his 
 favorite authors, — Virgil, Horace, Pliny, or Tacitus, — 
 
17 
 
 and lie under a tree, absorbed in reading, till the day's 
 sport was over. Indeed, in illustration of his habit of 
 abstraction, his nephew records : " My father has often 
 recounted to me that, when studying together in Tou- 
 louse and lodging in a very humble room, he has fre- 
 quently on awakening found my uncle at the place he 
 had left him on retiring, his elbows on the table, and 
 his hands supporting his head, still absorbed in a state 
 of meditation." 
 
 When after a three years' vain attempt at success as 
 a practitioner in Montpellier, I'inel finally, in 1777, 
 made up his mind to seek his fortune in Paris, the 
 same fatal drawback accompanied him thither. He 
 was then thirty-three years old, and so poor that he 
 made the journey on foot. Carrying with him a letter 
 to Cousin, the great geometer was at once struck with 
 his genius for mathematics, and counselled him to de- 
 vote his life to its pursuit. But he resumed his old 
 ways of gaining a modest living by teaching, and was 
 soon absorbed in the study of the works of Borelli, in 
 their application of the laws of statics and mechanics 
 to physiology. Besides he wrote articles for the 
 Gazette de Santi' and translated from the luiglish 
 Cullen's " Institutes of Medicine." Meanwhile he was 
 making a strong intellectual imjircssion on men of the 
 calibre of Cabanis and Thourct. 
 
i8 
 
 At last, then, he had gained friends willing and 
 powerful enough to help him, if only he would not 
 stand in his own light. This was an obstacle hard to 
 be overcome. When, for example, his friend Des- 
 fontaines presented him to Lemonnier, physician to 
 Louis XVI. (to procure him the position of doctor to 
 the aunts of the king), he scarcely spoke, remaining so 
 mute that the princesses formed so low an opinion of 
 him as to refuse to accept him. Three times he ap- 
 peared before the faculty in competition for the chair 
 of regent doctor, and three times signally failed in the 
 public trial. Finally, in 1784, at the advanced age of 
 thirty-nine, he offered himself a fourth time. On this 
 occasion his competitor was a former army surgeon, a 
 man of powerful frame, a sonorous voice, and imperturb- 
 able assurance, though ignorant to the last degree ; 
 while Pinel was below the medium height, of feeble 
 voice, embarrassed in manner, and halting in speech. 
 The burly army surgeon carried the day ; and all that 
 was left Pinel was to console himself by humorously 
 demonstrating algebraically to his friends the compara- 
 tive chances such public competitions offered to recent 
 cram and resounding brass over years consumed in the 
 most arduous preparation. 
 
 The French Revolution was at that time at its 
 height, and the Reign of Terror had broken loose. In 
 
19 
 
 the earlier days of the Revolution, like most humane 
 men, Pinel had hoped for the dawning of a millennial 
 day. But actual experience brought him a melancholy 
 lesson. Appointed in 1791 a municipal officer of some 
 grade, he writes thus in a letter of Nov. 7, 1792, to his 
 friend, M. Roustan : — 
 
 " You do well to speak with horror of the sanguinary 
 executions occurring in Paris on the 2d of September 
 and the following days ; and I declare to you never to 
 have experienced such a feeling of consternation as that 
 series of atrocious events has caused in my heart and 
 the hearts of all upright and enlightened men, , , , I 
 congratulate myself on not having been a municipal offi- 
 cer at that time. Without making any parade of fine 
 and generous sentiments, I would have done anything 
 in the world to prevent them or would have been killed 
 myself. , . . I have been cured of every desire to throw 
 myself again into this cyclone, especially in a country 
 where the man of audacity and miscreancy so easily 
 contrives by political cunning to ape true patriotism, 
 and lift himself to any position. IV//^// one sees a 
 Marat sitting side by side with our legislators, one need 
 little regret not having been put on the election 
 list. . . . You know that in the first days of the Revolu- 
 tion I also had this ambition ; but my life, as well as 
 that of certain of my confreres, has been in such 
 
20 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 
 danger when I so much as asked for justice and the^ 
 pubhc good that I have conceived such a profound hor- 
 ror of clubs and popular assemblies that since that time 
 I have kept clear of all public functions unconnected 
 with my medical profession. Certainly, I know well 
 now this country and the worth of so many pygmies 
 who make so great a noise." 
 
 Fourteen years had passed since Pinel's removal 
 from Montpellier to Paris ; and except within a narrow j 
 circle of such select friends as Helvetius, Cabanis, Con- | 
 dorcet, Thouret, D'Alembert, Halle, and Lavoisier, he 
 was still an unknown man. But all the while he had 
 been laying in enormous erudition the foundations for 
 his coming career. As far back as 1782 the cruel ^ 
 death of a friend driven insane by poverty, study, and 
 excess of ambition for glory, had directed his mind to 
 the study of mental alienation. In contrast with the 
 wretched means of treatment prevailing, he had been 
 struck v/ith the judicious precepts of the ancients, and, 
 besides, for five years had conducted observations on 
 mania and the application of moral remedies in a pri- 
 vate asylum (Maison de Sant6 Belhomme). 
 
 At last broke the dawn of a better day. Cabanis, 
 Cousin, and Thouret were placed at the head of the ad- 
 ministration of the hospitals of Paris ; and then with 
 united voice they cried, " Here is the sole man in 
 
21 
 
 France capable of remedying the disorders reigning in 
 the insane asylums ! " At once they demanded his ap- 
 pointment to the Bicetre, the horrors of which have 
 already been described ; and the great work began. 
 
 The heart of Pinel was torn by what he now saw in 
 daily and hourly intimacy of contact, familiar as before 
 he had been with it in the mass. He found within the 
 walls but one man able, practically, to help him, — a 
 sound-headed, human-hearted medical attendant named 
 Pousin, a man indeed of little education, but of strong 
 common sense and active humanity. 
 
 It was, however, from without, and not from within, 
 that the most virulent opposition was to be encoun- 
 tered. An insanity of suspicion, wrought to the pitch 
 of outright hallucination, — quite as marked as any 
 mania inside the walls of the Bicetre, — reigned in the 
 minds of the revolutionary government. Was not 
 this apparent zeal for the fate of howling madmen a 
 mere cloak to conceal the hatching of some diabolical 
 plot of the aristocrats ? None the less, though his own 
 life was in peril, Pinel set resolutely to work, studying 
 the individual characteristics of his patients. He flat- 
 tered the self-love of some, promised satisfaction to the 
 reasonable requests of others, controlled with kindness 
 and firmness the delirious fancies of others, and tried 
 to gain the confidence of all by holding out hopes of a 
 
22 
 
 better lot and of a return to their families through ab- 
 staining from violence and disorder. Finally, when he 
 had gained ascendency, he was ready to face the bold 
 experiment of freeing them from their chains, and ac- 
 cording a measure of liberty in the yards of their re- 
 spective divisions. 
 
 For this last step, however, there was need of govern- 
 ment authority. Appeal for permission had first to be 
 made to the terrible Couthon, then presiding over the 
 redoubtable commune of Paris, to that paralytic mon- 
 ster who from his litter had harried on the savage 
 sack of Lyons, and then, as he was borne through the 
 streets, had marked with his own hand the rows of 
 houses doomed to destruction. 
 
 Couthon's suspicions were at once aroused, and he 
 refused permission till he should have gone in person 
 to the Bicetre to investigate. What more plausible 
 than that the proposal to unchain these wild beasts 
 covered some desperate plot of the aristocrats to let 
 them loose for the massacre of the friends of the 
 people ! 
 
 Arrived on the scene, even Couthon, at home amidst 
 the frenzy of mobs, was appalled. "Are you mad 
 yourself to want to unchain these ferocious beasts ? " 
 "No," replied Pinel ; "but I am certain that these 
 wretched beings are so violent and crazed only because 
 
23 
 
 they are chained. I am convinced that, when they no 
 longer are, they will calm themselves, and perhaps grow 
 rational." Unquestionably there was in Pinel's look 
 and tone a moral ascendency — the eye of a Van 
 Amburgh in the cage of tigers and leopards — that 
 awed the ferocious revolutionary ; for Couthon cried, 
 " Do as you please ! " and left. 
 
 Forthwith Pinel set to work, and the next day struck 
 off the chains from fifty and a few days later from 
 thirty more. It is this admirable and beautiful spec- 
 tacle of science and mercy, doing such honor to human- 
 ity, which the Academy of Medicine has consecrated in 
 an enduring memorial in a picture adorning its hall of 
 session. 
 
 Still, ignorance, superstition, and political fanati- 
 cism continued to dog the steps of the great man. 
 Couthon himself had been brought over; but in the 
 minds of the half-insane populace an idea hail got 
 lodgment, akin to the delusion so common in panic 
 times of cholera, that the wells have been poisoned by 
 the doctors. Under this wild frenzy a frantic mob one 
 day seized Tincl, and was dragging him off to hang 
 him by the street-lamp rope, when Chevignc, an old 
 soldier of the French Guard, charged furiously in 
 among the throng, and rescued him from their haniis. 
 The man himself had been one of the insane whon) 
 
24 
 
 Pinel had freed from chains, restored to health, and 
 then taken into his own service. 
 
 To tell the whole truth, however, these wild suspi- 
 cions on the part of Jacobin leaders and frantic popu- 
 lace were not without a grain of foundation. In those 
 terrible days of hunting down noble men for the guillo- 
 tine, the tender humanity of Pinel led him to harbor 
 more than one intended victim in the guise of an in- 
 sane patient. Indeed, in doing his uttermost to save 
 Condorcet, Pinel bravely risked his own life. 
 
 For a term of nearly three years the great reformer 
 carried on his work at the Bicetre, and was then ap- 
 pointed to the charge of the Salpetriere, in which vast 
 asylum he was destined to remain for the rest of his 
 long life. His positive genius at last recognized, he 
 was in the following year named one of the board 
 of professors to organize the School of Medicine. 
 Crowds of students now flocked to his lectures, fired 
 with the hope of at last making a positive science, in- 
 stead of empirical guess-work, out of medicine ; among 
 these students Bichat, whose splendid genius was des- 
 tined to inaugurate a new epoch in histology. Pinel 
 was, moreover, steadily training a class of experts who 
 were to carry the fame and blessing of his classification 
 of mental diseases and of methods of treatment all over 
 Europe, and finally across the Atlantic to America, 
 
25 
 
 where, under the fervid apostlcship of Dorothea Lynde 
 Dix, asylums for the insane of the highest type were 
 founded in twenty different States. Of all this new 
 work of science and humanity, Pinel was now the 
 grand legislator. His " Traite Medico-philosophique sur 
 I'Alienation Mentale," published in 1800, became a 
 guide commanding universal reverence, a chart pre- 
 cise and clear through what had been a pathless wil- 
 derness. Though modifications in his classifications 
 were later made by his great pupils, Esquirol and 
 Ferrus, he, nevertheless, had laid down solid founda- 
 tions never to be removed. Far more than a mere 
 medical treatise, his was a work of the profoundest 
 philosophical reflection and moral insight, indispensa- 
 ble alike for physicians and all students occupied with 
 psychology, education, legislation, and the administra- 
 tion of justice; for into all these departments did 
 the gravest questions growing out of insanity extend. 
 Throughout its pages the consummate experience, im- 
 mense erudition, tenderness of heart, and fire of justice 
 of the man made themselves felt, lifting the subject 
 into universal relations. Later followed his " Noso- 
 graphic IMulosophique," for twenty years the acknowl- 
 edged standard of students and practitioners, and 
 which placed the final crown on his European reputa- 
 tion. 
 
26 
 
 It is pleasant to record that after the severe strug- 
 gle and humiliating neglect of his earlier period the 
 middle and later years of Pinel's life were full of 
 honors. In 1794 he was called to the chair of hygiene 
 along with Hall6, and in 1795 at the death of Doublet 
 to that of pathology. He was named member of the 
 Institute in 1803, consulting physician of the Emperor 
 Napoleon in 1805, and Chevalier of the Russian Order 
 of Saint Michel in 18 18. Of the closer relations into 
 which his appointment as consulting physician to the 
 emperor brought him with the world-famous man, a 
 single anecdote remains. When Napoleon returned 
 from Elba, at a reception of the Institute the emperor 
 asked him if the number of the insane was increasing. 
 "I answered no; but I thought to myself that superior 
 geniuses and famous and ambitious conquerors were 
 not exempt from a trace of madness." 
 
 Although living in such intimate relations with 
 Cabanis and his circle, Pinel, according to his nephew 
 and biographer, did not share their atheism. He had 
 a mind too lofty to see in nature and creation nothing 
 but a fortuitous assemblage of matter. He made no 
 attempt to penetrate the impenetrable, but bowed 
 humbly before the infinite. Without being a practical 
 Catholic, he cherished that religious sentiment which 
 inspires a morality sweet, persuasive, tolerant, the 
 
27 
 
 enemy of superstition and fanaticism. One day the 
 celebrated philosopher Lalande met Pinol, and said : " I 
 am preparing a new edition of my ' Dictionary of 
 Atheists/ in which I am reserving a special article for 
 you." "And I," replied Pinel, "am getting out a new 
 edition of my ' Treatise on Insanity,' in which I reserve 
 a like place for you." 
 
 In personal appearance, Pinel was of small stature, 
 but well proportioned and of strong constitution. He 
 had a broad, high, and prominent forehead, black hair 
 and aquiline nose, rounded chin, small mouth, and a 
 sweet and affable smile. His physiognomy was a 
 mingling of benevolence and reflection, his bearing 
 reserved and austere. " In seeing Pinel," says Du- 
 puytren, "one would have imagined he was looking 
 at a Greek sage. His nature was tender and sensi- 
 tive. He loved beauty and sublimity. He always 
 kept up his taste for poetry, and was passionately in 
 love with the masterpieces of antiquity." Indeed, his 
 biographer narrates that his poetic sensibility was so 
 extreme that, in discoursing of a fate so fraught with 
 glory and misery as that of Sappho, he would sob with 
 emotion. 
 
 Hut one other name is fairly entitled to share with 
 Pincl's the gratitude of mankind over this beneficent 
 revolution in the treatment of insanity, that of the 
 
28 
 
 Quaker, William Tuke, who, at about the time Pinel 
 was appointed to the Bicetre, established " The Re- 
 treat" in York, England. The self-restraining princi- 
 ples of the Friends, together with their invincible faith 
 in the indwelling light of God in the soul of man, had 
 instinctively led this remarkable man to the same con- 
 clusion Pinel had reached through the vast range of 
 his medical, physiological, and psychological studies. 
 With Pinel, however, will always remain the honor of 
 first establishing the new doctrine on a scientific basis, 
 of intellectually demonstrating it by rigid analysis, of 
 testing it under the most appalling circumstances, of 
 fortifying it through his weight of authority, and thus 
 of commanding its recognition throughout Europe and 
 America. 
 
 Philippe Pinel died at the advanced age of eighty- 
 one. Losing his first wife in 1812, he was remarried 
 in 18 1 5 to a woman ot a devotion so absolute that, when 
 there came to him at the age of nearly eighty the loss 
 of public position, and he was left with resources too 
 limited to keep up his previous modest style of living, 
 she denied herself to the uttermost to let no mark of 
 the change appear. 
 
 Death came Oct. 25, 1826. The concourse that fol- 
 lowed the bier to the cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise was 
 immense, — the most eminent scientific men of France, 
 
troops of reverent students, and with them throngs of 
 former inmates of the Bicctre and Salpetriere who 
 went out to pay the last tribute of tender respect to the 
 benefactor whose wisdom, mercy, and courage had de- 
 livered them from the scourgings and chains of igno- 
 rance and barbarity. 
 
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