The Russian Patient

On the painting called La Salpêtrière (1795), Tony Robert-Fleury depicts how ‘madness’ was dealt with during the age of enlightenment.

The ‘mad elements’ of the society were institutionalized in asylums, together with criminals. If you had nothing better to do on a Sunday, you could go to the asylum and watch the ‘mad’ for a penny. It attracted the curious eye, and since the reality Tv wasn’t yet present, mad people played a role of entertainers, amusing the public for what it was worth.

Not everyone agreed with the status quo, however. And not all doctors were unkind.

On La La Salpêtrière we can see a famous clinician, Philippe Pinnel, who was a chief physician at the famous Hospice de la La Salpȇtrière, an asylum for the insane in Paris. Philippe Pinnel advocated a more humanistic approach to the treatment of psychiatric patients, and there are some rumours that he even managed to liberate some inmates from their ordeal.

In this painting the artist shows how Pinnel orders the chains to be removed from a patient, which also demonstrates the growing power of psychiatry.

Give the chains to one kind man in power, and he will liberate the oppressed. Give it to someone who wants to abuse the same power, and you are chained for life.