Philippe Pinel

Philippe Pinel was born 20 April 1745, trained as a physician, and by the time of the French Revolution had turned his attention to the custody of the insane. He campaigned for the abolition of chains in asylums and pioneered what became known as moral therapy—humane psychological treatment instead of restraint and punishment. His textbook on insanity included an 1809 case some regard as the earliest description of what would later be called dementia praecox or schizophrenia, though Emil Kraepelin later conceptualized it formally. Pinel built the first systematic classification of mental disor…