Charcot’s Death and Legacy

Abstract Like many physicians who ignore the prescriptions they give to their own patients, Charcot led a professional and private life that did not include rest or particular attention to health. He ate heavily, smoked excessively, and maintained a level of activity of unceasing intensity. Even when traveling, he consulted, and his visits to museums included analyses of neurological illness in art. In December 1887, he presented a case of neurasthenia, and in deriding the “American illness,” he in fact described aspects of his own lifestyle: “Many Americans have a particular way of working. They do the same type of work over and over, sometimes for years. They overdo it, they give up their life for their work, nothing distracts them from it” (Charcot, LM, December 13, 1887).