Shadows at La Salpêtrière: Charcot and the legend of the wandering Jew

L. C. Álvaro González
Neurosciences and History 2024;12(2):94-104

Type of article: ORIGINAL

AUTHOR

L. C. Álvaro González
Neurology Department. Hospital Universitario Basurto, Bilbao, Bizkaia, Spain.
Department of Neuroscience. UPV/EHU, Leioa, Bizkaia, Spain.

ABSTRACT

Introduction and objectives. Antisemitic rhetoric has permeated Europe for centuries. This rhetoric includes the belief that Jews present mental and physical defects and degeneration, and have links with such marginalised social groups as vagrants and prostitutes. The legend of the wandering Jew is a good example of this. According to this legend, a Jew denied Christ a drink of water on his ascent to Mount Calvary, an idea that has impregnated European culture. Neurology is no exception, with the figure of J.M. Charcot as the protagonist.

Matherial. This study reviews Henry Meige’s thesis Le juif-errant à la Salpêtrière: études sur certains névropathes voyageurs (The wandering Jew at La Salpêtrière: studies of certain neuropathic travellers), presented in 1893, the year of Charcot’s death. Meige, 26 years old at the time, was one of the most prominent disciples of the Master of La Salpêtrière. Literature and images were also gathered from other sources.

Results. In 94 pages, Meige reviews the legend of the wandering Jew and describes five cases from La Salpêtrière studied by Charcot. The patients were four men and a woman, aged 23-49 years, all from Central Europe. Their physical appearance and attire were those of the stereotypical Jew, with a characteristic facies expressing deep suffering. They had been wandering around Europe for years. They presented headache, pain affecting the spine and limbs, sensory alterations, spasms, tunnel vision, urinary and genital symptoms, dyspepsia, insomnia, rheumatism, and asthenia. They were diagnosed with hysteroneurasthenia or (pseudo)epileptic ambulatory automatism. The reports emphasised their moral and intellectual fragility and the hereditary nature of their condition. Meige, at the time a resident under Charcot, was probably too young to have conceived the syndrome of the neuropathic traveller. In fact, the writing style suggests that the text was written by his master.

Discussion. These patients are miserable, hypochondriac, cursed people. They briefly improved with specific treatments (hydroelectrotherapy, painkillers, zinc). They constitute good examples of the phenomenon of the self-fulfilling prophecy, at a time when the Dreyfus affair (1894) unleashed a wave of antisemitism that shook the French Third Republic. This article illustrates the stance of the physicians working at La Salpêtrière, who embody the triumphant medical class.

KEYWORDS

Henry Meige, Charcot, La Salpêtrière, antisemitism, wandering Jew, syndrome of the neuropathic traveller

Neurosciences and History 2024;12(2):94-104