The Fascinated of Charity

This essay intends to do justice to a painting, Les fascinés de la Charité, to its author, Georges Moreau de Tours (1848-1901), and to the protagonist of the painting, the neurologist, Jules Bernard Luys (1828-1897), the painting representing a public session of hypnotization of hysterical patients by the team of the service, then directed by Luys, at the Hôpital de la Charité. Although it is sometimes reproduced, in particular in books or articles on the origins of psychiatry, the painting has never been the subject of an in-depth study, with the exception of the few pages devoted to it by Annick Opinel in her book, Le peintre et le mal, to which we will return later. Exhibited in 1890 at the Salon des Champs Elysées, then, the same year in Reims.