Nosographie philosophique

ou, la méthode de l'anaylse appliquée a la médicine

Edición de la obra Nosographie philosophique

"Although he is properly considered one of the founders of psychiatry, Pinel's contemporaries regarded him as a master of internal medicine, a reputation based upon the authoritative classification of diseases he set out in his Nosographie philosophique, published in 1798 ... Pinel's nosological work should be viewed in the context of the great eighteenth century works concerned with classification of which the works of Linneaus are an example. Pinel was aware of the difficulties that his predecessors [William Cullen, David McBride and Erasmus Darwin (Zoonomia)] had faced, but he approached his task cheerfully, secure in his belief that a disease was 'an indivisible whole from its commencement to its conclusion, a regular ensemble of characteristic symptoms.' Since these symptoms could be observed and analyzed, a classification of disease was possible. Pinel thus divided diseases into five classes-fevers, phlegmasias (diseases of tissues), hemorrhages, neuroses, and diseases caused by organic lesions"--DSB.