Bénédict Augustin Morel

Bénédict Augustin Morel (born November 22, 1809 in Vienna , † March 30, 1873 in Saint-Yon near Paris) was a French psychiatrist .

Life

Morel studied in Paris, where he financed his studies by teaching German and English. In 1839 he received his doctorate and in 1841 assistant to Jean Pierre Falret at Salpêtrière . From 1843 to 1845 Morel traveled to the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Italy to visit the insane asylums there. In 1848 he became director of the Asile d'Aliénés de Maréville in Nancy . There he reformed the company to improve the situation for patients. He studied the patients, researched their family history, and also examined the influence of poverty and early physical illness.

In 1856 he became director of the establishment in Saint-Yon (Seine-Inférieure) in Rouen and traveled to England for further research.

He formulated his theory of degeneration in 1857. Morel's concept of dégénérescence (“degeneration, degeneration”) did not arise from a purely medical approach, but rather went back to religious and anthropological ideas. He was a devout Catholic all his life.

Morel was friends with Claude Bernard and an admirer of Charles Darwin .

Degeneration theory

Requirements

The term degeneration was already used in a pejorative sense in the 17th century. Little resilient children and criminals were described as "degenerate". From the end of the 18th century it was assumed that certain pathological changes are hereditary. (→ Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck ) The French doctor Prosper Lucas assumes in L'Hérédité naturelle (1847–1850) that psychological and psychopathological characteristics are hereditary; however, he could not explain why seemingly healthy families also have sick members. Morel tried to close this gap in 1857.

Morel's theory of degeneration

For Morel, the cause of the deviations is the fall into sin of human nature. In the beginning there was the "type primitif" or "type normal", the original man who can be seen as identical with Adam . After the fall of man, man can no longer withdraw himself from the external influences of the world, the climate, food and the inheritance of these influences and deviates from this original man. This leads to two different types of human species: a.) Some of the offspring remain healthy through adaptation, fulfill the divine command and continue the unity of the human species. b.) In the degenerate, stress caused by the parents, the social milieu and a wrong way of life (such as alcoholism) lead to progressive degeneration. The latter are governed by two fundamental laws: a.) Double inheritance in the sense of physical and moral evil and b.) The progressiveness of degeneration up to extinction of the sex. He classifies the degenerations from an etiological point of view and declares heredity to be the most important cause of mental illnesses, so that degenerate and mentally ill become identical. The most severe category of the degenerations includes deviations in the sexual sense , sexual perversions , in which he initially names satyriasis , nymphomania , erotomania and the most severe category is necrophilia . The progression over the generations develops in four stages:

character abnormalities such as nervous irritability
physical illnesses such as stroke
severe mental disorders such as psychosis and mental weakness
congenital nonsense and malformations

His theory quickly spread to academia as well as the public. Soon everyone could refer to the "natural laws" and progressive degeneration became an obvious fact that was visible at every turn: alcoholism, poverty, crime, full mental hospitals.

Further development

Valentin Magnan (1835–1916) initially dealt with the degeneration of alcohol addicts and took up Morel's teaching, but rejected his religious ideas and oriented himself on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which regards degeneration as regression : Because a disease-causing influence on people in his inhibits the ascending path of development, it goes backwards until it eventually - in the course of generations - dies out. This teaching determined French psychiatry for decades and also found its way into German psychiatry, where Paul Julius Möbius in particular contributed to its spread. But he did not want to equate “degenerative” with “hereditary” and introduces the term “endogenous” in the sense of hereditary. The influence of Morel and his followers lasted well into the 20th century.

Fonts

Traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espèce humaine et des causes qui produisent ces varitétés maladives ("Treatise on the physical, intellectual and moral degenerations of the human race [...]"), Paris 1857.
Traité des maladies mentales . two volumes; Paris, 1852-1853; second edition, 1860. (In the second edition he coined the term démence-precoce to refer to mental degeneration).
The no-restraint ou de l'abolition des moyens coercitifs dans le traitement de la folie . Paris, 1861.
Du et goitre you crétinisme, etiology, etc prophylaxie . Paris, 1864.
De la formation des types dans les variétés dégénérées . Volume 1; Rouen, 1864.

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c Bénédict Augustin Morel. whonamedit.com (undated).
↑ Volker Roelcke: Degeneration. In: Werner E. Gerabek : Encyclopedia Medical History. Walter de Gruyter, 2007. ISBN 978-3-11-097694-6 . P. 290.
↑ Thomas Edward Jordan: The Degeneracy Crisis and Victorian Youth. Suny Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-7914-1245-9 . P. 18ff.

personal data
SURNAME	Morel, Bénédict Augustin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH	November 22, 1809
PLACE OF BIRTH	Vienna
DATE OF DEATH	March 30, 1873
Place of death	Saint-Yon

[wni-1] Bénédict Augustin Morel. whonamedit.com (undated).

[2] Volker Roelcke: Degeneration. In: Werner E. Gerabek : Encyclopedia Medical History. Walter de Gruyter, 2007. ISBN 978-3-11-097694-6 . P. 290.

[3] Thomas Edward Jordan: The Degeneracy Crisis and Victorian Youth. Suny Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-7914-1245-9 . P. 18ff.