Olivier Walusinski
The Charcot Journal. 2026;2(2):35–49.
Abstract
Jean-Martin Charcot, recognized as one of the founding fathers of neurology, began his hospital career as an internist and geriatrician responsible for some 2,500 elderly women at what was originally a nursing home and asylum, the Hospice de la Vieillesse Femmes at La Salpêtrière Hospital. For some twenty years, he thus had the opportunity to introduce pathologies identified in England and Germany to French physicians, such as Graves’ disease and Addison’s disease. In cardiology, he worked on the pathophysiology of intermittent claudication and pulmonary embolism. He then extended the concept of embolism to infectious pathology. Over many years, his clinical and metabolic research on gout led him to conduct multiple studies on rheumatology, notably chronic forms of rheumatoid arthritis. This summary is only a limited overview of the nearly 100 publications on various subjects covering all medical fields. Charcot’s contributions may thus be considered as significant as those he made to neurology.
Keywords: Jean-Martin Charcot, Geriatrics, Gout, Pulmonary embolism, Intermittent Claudication