Jean Abadie

Jean Abadie (1873–1946) was a French doctor and professor of neuropsychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine in Bordeaux who played a major role in the founding of the Bordeaux school of neuropsychiatry and epileptology.

Biography Joseph Louis Irénée Jean Abadie, known as Jean Abadie, was born in Tarbes at 8 Rue des Pyrénées (Hautes-Pyrénées) on 15 December 1873 and died in Bordeaux (Gironde) on 24 March 1946. His parents were Vital Abadie, a tailor sergeant in the Third Company of Mounted Sergeants, and Jeanne Marie Bourrec. He married Jeanne Marie Andrée Abadie (1881–1974) in Bourg-sur-Gironde on 28 April 1904, His elder sister, Anne-Marie Antoinette, was the wife of Professor Alexandre Le Dantec (1857–1932), holder of the Chair of Tropical Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine in Bordeaux. His brother, Charles-Albert Abadie (1880–1937), was a songwriter.

During the First World War, Jean Abadie served as a doctor in the Second Group of the General Staff, and subsequently worked as a consultant doctor for the army. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre medal for his military service in the 1914–1918 war.

Jean Abadie began his medical studies at the Faculty of Medicine in Bordeaux in 1893, then served as a hospital intern (passing the 1894 examination, then being awarded the bronze medal in 1896 and the silver medal in 1897). He passed the hospital residency examination in 1897, receiving the gold medal in 1900.

He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1900, served as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Bordeaux (1901–1903) in Professor Albert Pitres's department at , and was subsequently appointed as a consultant at the Hospitals of Bordeaux (competition 1903). In 1901, he was awarded the gold medal first prize for his medical thesis on “The Functional Locations of the Internal Capsule”, which he defended on 7 November 1900.

His path to the agrégation exam was complicated by the rivalry reigning at that time in France between neuropsychiatrists in general hospitals and psychiatrists ("alienists") in psychiatric asylums. Jean Abadie first passed the medical agrégation examination in 1904, then sat the mental health agrégation examination in 1913, where he was ranked first ahead of Dr Charles Perrens. Perrens, also a student of Professor Pitres but who had chosen to continue his training in Paris, challenged this decision before the French State Council, which in 1918 rejected Jean Abadie's appointment on the grounds that a candidate could not sit two different agrégation examinations. This setback was to be very short-lived, however, as it was Jean Abadie, and not Charles Perrens, who succeeded Professor Emmanuel Régis (1855–1918) in 1919 as holder of the clinical chair of neurological and mental disorders at the Faculty of Medicine in Bordeaux.

Scientific work and publications

Jean Abadie was regarded as one of the most brilliant and distinguished figures in French neuropsychiatry of the first half of XXe century. In this landmark report, Jean Abadie clarified the clinical and aetiological characteristics of the various types of epilepsy, and drew attention to perinatal risk factors such as obstetric trauma, alcoholism and syphilis in the parents. He also studied multiple sclerosis, poliomyelitis, subarachnoid haemorrhages and Von Economo's endemic encephalitis. Together with his mentor, Professor Emmanuel Régis, he helped organise schooling for ‘abnormal children’ in the city of Bordeaux, establishing classes within public state schools tailored to their level of disability. More than 1,500 so-called ‘abnormal’ children were registered from 1906 onwards following assessment by members of the medical-educational commission set up for this purpose, of which Jean Abadie was an active member. The first two classes for boys opened in 1907, and the first class for girls in 1908. Jean Abadie continued this work for ‘children with special needs’ following Professor Régis's death.

Jean Abadie was one of the founders of the Bordeaux university school of neuropsychiatry, based on the model whereby medical psychiatry is a component of a multidisciplinary approach involving several other medical specialities. As hospital and university posts were voluntary at the time, he devoted his afternoons to his private practice and visited his patients hospitalised at the Castel d’Andorte private clinic located near Bordeaux. Taking its inspiration from the North American model of integrated academic neuropsychiatry, it was the first of its kind in France and was widely considered the most modern neuropsychiatric centre in Europe. It brought together all brain-related specialities under one roof: neurology, neurosurgery, neuroradiology, neuropathology, functional investigations, and psychiatry.

The departure of the university psychiatrists (Professor Marc Louis Bourgeois and colleagues) to the Bordeaux psychiatric hospital in 1973, followed by the move of other specialities to other sites of Bordeaux universitary hospital, marked the end of Bordeaux's historic academic neuropsychiatry centre.