Georges Gilles de la Tourette

Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette (; 30 October 1857 – 22 May 1904) was a French neurologist and the eponym of Tourette syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by tics.

Early life Gilles de la Tourette was born the oldest of four children on 30 October 1857

During 1873, Gilles de la Tourette began medical studies at Poitiers at the age of sixteen. Charcot also helped him to advance in his academic career. Gilles de la Tourette studied and lectured in psychotherapy, hysteria, and medical and legal ramifications of mesmerism (modern-day hypnosis). Colleagues and historians have described him as a "highly intelligent, if irascible, character". Charcot renamed the syndrome "Gilles de la Tourette's illness" in his honor,

Personal life and decline

Gilles de la Tourette married his cousin Marie Detrois (1867–1922) on 2 August 1887 in Loudon. Paul Brouardel and Charcot were witnesses. They had four children, three of whom lived to adulthood.

In 1893, Rose Kamper, a former patient at the Salpêtrière, who was later revealed to have psychosis, shot Gilles de la Tourette in the neck, (Some older sources state that he was shot in the head; His condition worsened and he was forced to resign.) Lees (2019) states that "Gilles de la Tourette died of general paralysis of the insane (neurosyphilis)".

Writings Gilles de la Tourette published sixteen papers on hysteria, including: Les actualités médicales, les états neurasthéniques (Paris 1898) Leçons de clinique thérapeutique sur les maladies du système nerveux (Paris 1898) L'hypnotisme et les états analogues au point de vue médico-légal (Paris, 1887; 2nd. edition Paris 1889) Les actualités médicales. Formes cliniques et traitement des myélites syphilitiques' convulsifs (La semaine médicale 1899) Traité clinique et thérapeutique de l'hystérie d'après l'enseignement de la Salpêtrière (Paris 1891)