PRIEUR (Albert). - Lot 172

PRIEUR (Albert). French physician. Author of several books; edited La France médicale from 1905 to 1914. Autograph manuscript signed, entitled "Science". S.l.n.d. [circa 1900]. 12 pages in-4. Important manuscript of medical-philosophical and psychological reflections on three subjects: Charrin's work on "the body's natural defenses", Cendrjopoulos's experiments on "the sun and living bodies", and, above all, Sikorski's study of the "walled men of Ternovo". The text develops a meditation on collective psychic mechanisms, automatism and the phenomena of morbid suggestion. Prieur discusses at length the famous case of the "Ternovo inmates", a dramatic episode that occurred in Russia at the end of the 19th century, interpreted as a form of collective suicide due to religious exaltation: "... religious causes are considered by a nervous state in which an idea becomes morbid..." and further on: "... a man absorbed by the desire to die by fire throws himself with a delirium of objects without any of the least suffering..." The manuscript testifies to the interest of French doctors of the Belle Époque in psychiatry, hypnosis, pathological crowds and contemporary theories of degeneration and psychic automatisms. Numerous autograph corrections. Some foxing, small marginal tear to last leaf, without damaging the text.