Augustin Morvan (1819-1897), a little-known rural physician and neurologist.

Augustin Morvan (1819-1897) was a contemporary of Jean-Martin Charcot who practised medicine in rural Brittany. A perspicacious and astute clinician, he described three clinical pictures not previously isolated: in 1875 the semiology of myxoedema, in 1883 the neurological semiology of syringomyelia which he called "paretic analgesia of the upper extremities", and finally in 1890 the semiology of "fibrillary chorea", currently considered a model of synaptic pathology involving immunological damage to potassium channels and causing (as perfectly described by Morvan) myokymia, autonomic nervous system disturbances and agrypnia. "Fibrillary chorea" is today known as Morvan's syndrome and linked to limbic encephalitis.