Abstract
Modern French psychiatry was born at the end of the eighteenth century. This medical speciality, which was separating from general medicine, had a foundation in ancient medicine. Ancient theories died slowly but not so surely. These strange theories will be considered useless and even dangerous by the modern reader but they enabled modern psychiatry to understand that madness existed, that it was a disease and a subject for research. So the insane person was no longer considered a criminal or possessed by the devil: he was, at last and at least, a patient.
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