The specter of general paralysis [GP] is a welcome term. Historically, it is a tertiary syphilitic meningoencephalitis that some have call syphilo-psychosis What about . It was a real scourge in the last century and was establish in 1822 by Bayle. Why do we call it “general”? Probably because the germ responsible, the treponema, neither virus nor bacteria, is capable of anything in all organs if given time. For GP, it takes decades. In the past, the specter was denounc from the podium of the Chamber of Deputies under this interpellation from a politician of the Third Republic: “Our soldiers get drunk in front of the bar. They get syphiliz behind it!”
One might think that syphilis is no longer a question. There you have it, because the treponema is in league with AIDS. It is an opportunistic germ that, like Koch’s bacillus, benefits from immunodepression. Also, where AIDS is spreading, Africa, South America, sex tourism, pox, large pox, is coming back to us. This is a public health problem, because we will have to relearn to teach the basic clinic of PG. Thus, we will have to look carefully at the pupils, appreciate a discreet ataxia, explore dysarthria (4) . We will also have to ensure the hand that performs the lumbar puncture and learn to read the results of serological tests more detail than the Bordet-Wassermann. The treatments are fortunately more modern than malaria therapy. PG is not eradicat, any more than hazardous fornications!
Our problem today concerns three
short communications, dat from the years 1929-1930. They are sign by Lacan, who, at that time, was not yet a doctor of micine, nor head of clinic. What did he write about these texts? In 1933, in General Statement of Our Scientific Works, he specifies that he phone number list publish “according to the orientation given to us by our masters (…) to highlight the determining organic conditions in a certain number of mental syndromes”. (5)
Thus, we can assume that it was not Lacan who wrote with his pen, in 1929, “(…) the paranoid state, symptomatic of general paralysis”. Lacan was, in fact, at that the audience gets to your site from search engines time, co-signatory of a text with Georges Heuyer, who is known to us for the part he play in the emergence of child and adolescent psychiatry. (6) However, he was not very favourable to psychoanalysis and The communications, quite brief
are made under the aegis of the Paris
Psychiatry Society whose multi-year meetings are publish in the journal l’Encéphale. This journal, still present in 2005, is fiercely positivist, and even scientistic in the pejorative sense.
What is the context? At the book your list beginning of the 20th century, neurology is the aristocratic mical discipline. It is the triumph, the apotheosis of anatomoclinics, since we manag to report a peripheral clinical manifestation to a neuro-anatomical site. Charcot had rightly stat, “All in all, the work of neurology is complete”, which Mr and Mrs Déjérine confirm in their 1913 treatise. Basically, with PG, we found Bayle’s ambition, namely the autopsy, which was modestly call “appointment with Morgagni” (7) explain mental symptoms.
