Marie Wittman
French woman known as one of the hysteria patients of Jean-Martin Charcot
Marie "Blanche" Wittman (often spelled Wittmann; French pronunciation: [maʁi vitman]; April 15, 1859 – 1913) was a French woman known as one of the hysteria patients of Jean-Martin Charcot. She was institutionalized in La Salpêtrière in 1877, and was treated by Charcot until his death in 1893. She later became a radiology assistant at the hospital, which resulted in amputations of her arms due to radiation poisoning.
Charcot's techniques were controversial; commentators have disagreed as to whether Wittman suffered from a physical condition like epileptic seizures, suffered from mass hysteria resulting from conditions at La Salpêtrière, or was merely feigning symptoms. She is depicted in A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière (1887) and was the subject of a 2004 Per Olov Enquist novel.
Early life
Wittman was born in Paris on April 15, 1859. Her early life is known only from information she provided to Paul-Marie-Léon Regnard and Désiré-Magloire Bourneville in 1877. Wittman's father was a Swiss carpenter; prone to anger, he went insane and was placed in an institution. Her mother was a linen maid. Five of Wittman's eight siblings died of epilepsy and seizures.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marie Wittman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.