Jean-Noël Seignot (1925–2022) et le syndrome de Gilles de la Tourette, un pionnier méconnu de l’utilisation des neuroleptiques

Abstract

Jean-Noël Seignot (1925–2022) was a neuropsychiatrist who authored a single publication in his own name; he wrote it during his career as a physician in private practice. However, this famous article, published in 1961 in Annales Médico-Psychologiques, is one of the most cited in bibliographies on Georges Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, notably with regard to its treatment by haloperidol. Seignot was the first author to have treated a very severe case of Georges Gilles de la Tourette syndrome with this new medication, which was still in an experimental phase. He succeeded in decreasing tics and coprolalia in a way that no previous therapy had been able to do. In 1961, the American neuropsychiatrists Arthur K. Shapiro (1923–1995) and Elaine Shapiro (1925–2014) confirmed the efficacy of haloperidol in decreasing tics, and they never failed to cite Seignot's article, even though they never personally met its author. Drawing on an unpublished family archive, this article also shows how Seignot was the first psychiatrist to treat serious, acute states of delirium, complicated by autonomic disorders, with RP. 4560 (©Largactil) in 1952. He followed in the footsteps of Henri Laborit (1914–1995) soon after Laborit's seminal description in La Presse médicale.