1745-1826

French Physician and Psychiatrist

Philippe Pinel revolutionized the treatment of the insane by insisting upon "moral management" instead of violence and incarceration. He was among the first psychiatric doctors who believed that mental illness was curable and that mental patients would respond positively to sympathetic care. Today, Pinel is credited with inventing the mental hospital, and with it, the idea that mental illness can be treated.

The son of a doctor of modest income and the eldest of seven children, Pinel was born in a small village in southwest France. He studied mathematics at the university at Toulouse before taking a medical degree at Montpelier. Pinel's early career as a physician was spent in a private family clinic, and in 1793 he was appointed physician at Bicêtre, a public mental asylum that housed 800 men. Despite the great impact he was to have upon the mentally...