Georges Gilles de la Tourette

Georges Gilles de la Tourette

Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette (30 October 1857 – 26 May 1904) was a French medical doctor. He was a neurologist, but the field did not exist during his time. His main work in medicine were in the fields of hypnotism and hysteria. He is the namesake of Tourette syndrome, a neurological condition identified by physical and verbal tics. By 1885, Gilles de la Tourette published nine cases with similar symptoms. His mentor, Jean-Martin Charcot, renamed the syndrome "Gilles de la Tourette's illness" in his honour.

Gilles de la Tourette was born in Saint-Gervais-les-Trois-Clochers, Vienne. He married his cousin Marie Detrois (1867–1922) in 1887. The couple had four children, one of whom died in childhood of meningitis.

In 1893, a former female patient shot Gilles de la Tourette in the head. She claimed that he had hypnotised her against her will. He soon began to have mood swings between depression and hypomania. Around 1901–02, his condition became worse. On 26 May 1904, he died at a psychiatric hospital in Prilly, Lausanne, Switzerland. He was 46.

Georges Gilles De La Tourette Media

• 

  In A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière (1887), French painter André Brouillet depicts a medical lecture with Jean-Martin Charcot and Gilles de la Tourette (seated at front)

• 

  1893 depiction of the shooting of Gilles de la Tourette