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Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), son of a Parisian craftsman, went on to a brilliant university career and worked his way to the top of the hospital hierarchy. Becoming a resident in 1858 at the women’s nursing home and asylum at La Salpêtrière Hospital, he returned there in 1868 as chief physician. Observing more than 2,000 elderly women, he first worked as a geriatrician–internist, leading him to describe thyroid pathology, cruoric pulmonary embolism, and so forth. To deal with the numerous nervous system pathologies, he applied the anatomoclinical method with the addition of microscopy. In less than around 10 years, his perspicacious clinical eye enabled him to describe Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and tabetic arthropathy and to identify medullary localizations, for example. Already aware of functional neurological disorders, at that time referred to as hysteria and frequent to this day, Charcot used hypnosis to try to decipher the pathophysiology. His thinking gradually evolved from looking for lesions to recognizing triggering psychological trauma. This prolonged search, misinterpreted for years, opened the way to fine, precise clinical semiology, specific to neurology and psychosomatic medicine. Charcot knew how to surround himself with a cohort of brilliant clinicians, who often became as famous as he was, notably Pierre Marie (1853–1940), Georges Gilles de la Tourette (1857–1904), Joseph Babiński (1857–1932), and Pierre Janet (1859–1947). This cohort and the breadth of Charcot’s innovative work define what is now classically called the “Salpêtrière School.”

Jean-René Cruchet (1875–1959) was a French physician from Bordeaux, where he practiced for the entirety of his career. His notoriety resulted from his publication of the first cases of the encephalitis lethargica epidemic in World War I soldiers in 1917, a few days before Constantin von Economo reported his cases. Cruchet developed an interest in abnormal movements, notably tics and dystonia, for which he primarily saw a psychological cause, to be treated rigorously with good habits and repressive precepts. He wrote prolifically about his areas of interest, also focusing on parkinsonian syndromes and the treatment of hysterics, notably soldiers with camptocormia. One of the first physicians to also be an aviator, Cruchet was a pioneer in the study of autonomic modifications caused by flying and pressure variations, which he referred to as aviator’s disease. As a personality with an outsized ego, he imagined that he would remain as famous after his death as Jean-Martin Charcot or Louis Pasteur.