Salpetriere: Horror Chamber of the Sexual Lunatics

The invention of “female hysteria” and accompanying photographic experiments by Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot were condemned by some as “sexually depraved”, but hailed by Andre Breton and the Surrealists as the visual apotheosis of “l’amour fou”. Conducted during the 1870s at the lunatic asylum of Salpetriere in Paris, Charcot’s experiments – which also involved hypnosis – often bordered on “medical erotica”, and remain controversial to this day. This special ebook presentation of more than 40 startling pathology photographs includes images from both Charcot’s Iconographique de la Salpetriere (1878) and Nouvelle Iconographique de la Salpetriere (1888-1917).