Marie Wittman

Marie "Blanche" Wittman (often spelled Wittmann; ; April 15, 18591913) 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. At 22 months old, she became deaf and mute after suffering seizures, but she regained her speech and hearing around age seven. These claims were made in 1890 by intern Alfred Binet; after Charcot's 1893 death, his assistant Joseph Babinski rejected Charcot's neurological explanation of hysteria. However, this claim was not discussed in the 1906 interview. (Some sources list her death as being of a hemorrhage in August 1909 "at the age of 56" (inconsistent with her 1859 birth) or 1912.) However, a 2020 paper argues that the apparatus visible next to Charcot is a du Bois-Reymond induction device, and that the painting thus depicts Wittman in hypnotic lethargy, with Charcot having electrically induced the "ecstatic" expression on her face.

Per Olov Enquist's 2004 novel (The book about Blanche and Marie) takes the form of purported lost journals by Wittman. The novel takes considerable historical liberties: Wittman is portrayed in a sexual relationship with Charcot, and later becomes Marie Curie's assistant and confidante. However, a 2007 letter published in The Lancet criticized the novel for the "slandering of an unfortunate patient and two icons of science", including the invention of the relationship between Charcot and Wittman.