The girls of La Salpêtrière.

It was only by chance that French hospital authorities assigned Jean-Martin Charcot to the care of hysterics and epileptics, starting in 1870, at La Salpêtrière Hospital. The famous clinical work that resulted has been the subject of much discussion and, in many cases, misinterpretation. By referring to original sources, i.e., the medical observations written at the time by the department's staff, our aim is to bring the hospitalized patients to life. Many of these observations contain intimate details and reveal the painful experiences that led these young women to La Salpêtrière. To understand the gradual, 20-year evolution of Charcot's neurological thinking about hysteria, from organicity to psychology, in both clinical and therapeutic terms, it is more revealing to analyze all the physical and psychological miseries that make up this forgotten 'human material' than it is to examine the neurologist's famous lessons.