Valentin Magnan

Valentin Magnan (1835-1916) was a French psychiatrist who was a native of Perpignan. He studied medicine in Lyon and Paris, where he was a student of Jules Baillarger (1809-1890) and Jean-Pierre Falret (1794-1870). From 1867 until the end of his career he was associated with the Hôpital Sainte-Anne in Paris.

Magnan was an influential figure in French psychiatry in the latter half of the 19th century. He is remembered for his studies involving alcoholism, epilepsy and general paralysis. He expanded the concept of degeneration that was first introduced into psychiatry by Bénédict Augustin Morel (1809-1873). Magnan's theory of degeneration was a form of "evolutionary biology" that was based on an hereditary precept. He also used terms such as "bouffées délirantes" (acute delirious episodes) and "délire chronique systématique" (routine chronic delusional state) as descriptive categories of mental illness.

Magnan believed that the prodiguous use of alcohol, and especially absinthe was a major factor concerning what he perceived as a decline of French culture. He published articles that described addiction, hyperexcitability, epileptic fits and hallucinations associated with the consumption of absinthe. It was later shown that Magnan's laboratory experiments regarding absinthe were biased due to his usage of pure wormwood during testing, rather than absinthe, which contains only a small percentage of wormwood.

Magnan took a humanistic approach to his patients, and was a major force regarding modernization of mental asylums. Among his written works is the treatise "Délire chronique", which he co-authored with psychiatrist Paul Sérieux (1864-1947).
* Associated eponym:
* "Magnan's sign": An illusory sensation of a crawling foreign body being beneath the skin; a paresthesia in the psychosis of cocaine addicts.

References

* "This article is based on a translation of an article from the French Wikipedia."
* [http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?Magnan's+sign On Line Medical Dictionary]