Philippe Pinel

Educated in mathematics and medicine at Toulouse and Montpellier, Pinel arrived in Paris in 1778. In 1793, in the midst of the Reign of Terror, he was appointed chief physician to the Bicêtre hospice for insane men, where patients were treated like wild beasts, chained to damp dungeon walls.

Pinel defied conventional brutality by removing chains, substituting compassionate conversation, clean clothing, and purposeful work ('traitement moral'). In 1795, he extended his reforms to 7,000 women at the Salpêtrière. In his 1801 Traité médico-philosophique sur l'aliénation mentale, he classified psychiatric diseases, establishing clinical psychiatry as a medical discipline.