De la filosofía de la locura a la higiene del alma. Joseph Daquin (1732-1815)

La Philosophie de la folie (1791; 2nd ed.: 1804) constitutes an essential precursor of what would later come to be known as moral treatment. Its author, Joseph Daquin, was a physician at the Hospice des Incurables patients in the city of Chambery (formerly the Duchy of Savoy; Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia) from 1788. The work contains his thoughts on nature and the causes of madness, and is clearly in tune with the philanthropic trends of the end of the Enlightenment. It defends humane treatment of lunatics at all times, revises traditional treatments and introduces new forms of therapy. Daquin emphasizes the Hippocratic (and enlightened) prudence of the vis medicatrix naturae and diet, understood as a regimen for life, as the health of the soul. In short, a detailed analysis of the work by Daquin, overlooked by his Parisian contemporaries, will enable us to evaluate and affirm his importance to the origins of alienism.