Lasègue, Ernest-Charles

   (1816–1883)

   Originator of a crucial early differentiation in psychiatric diagnosis (that persecutory delusions without deterioration of the personality were a separate illness from madness; see PARANOIA), Lasègue was born in Paris, the son of a distinguished naturalist. He interned at the Salpêtrière hospice under Jean-Pierre Falret (having physiologist Claude Bernard [1813–1878] as a fellow intern) and defended his doctoral thesis in 1846. In 1850, he became the first medical director of the psychiatric intake service of the Paris Prefecture of Police—then called the "dêpot" rather than, as after 1872, the Infirmérie spéciale—where he continued to preside for the rest of his career while having other posts as well. This intake service functioned for Lasègue, as for a number of other clinicians over the years, as an inexhaustible source of mental pathology. In 1853, Lasègue passed his Agrégation exam, and the next year was appointed to the rank of ward chief (médecin des hôpitaux). Thereafter, he made a number of lateral moves through the Paris public hospitals, including the Salpêtrière hospice, Saint-Antoine hospital, and Necker hospital (where after 1862 he began lecturing on psychiatry). He lectured on psychiatry at the Salpêtrière as well, and in 1866, the final year of the series, took the students on a field trip to hear Bénédict-Augustin Morel discoursing on degeneration (see Psychosis: Emergence: mania . . . degeneration [1857]) at the Saint-Yon asylum near Rouen. Lasègue finally landed at La Pitié hospital, where, after being promoted in 1867 to the academic rank of professor of pathology, in 1869 he received the chair in clinical medicine. He wrote widely about issues in internal medicine, but his contributions in psychiatry were his 1852 article on delusions of persecution (see PARANOIA), "hysterical anorexia" (see Body Image: Disturbances of: anorexia nervosa [1873]), and Folie à Deux.