page_title: Marie Wittman
section_title: Depictions
hierarchical_section_title: Marie Wittman / Depictions
context_page_description: Marie "Blanche" Wittman [often spelled Wittmann] was a French woman known as one of the hysteria patients of Jean-Martin Charcot. She was institutionalized in La Salpêtrière in 1877 and was treated by Charcot until his death in 1893. She later became a radiology assistant at the hospital, which resulted in amputations due to radiation poisoning.
  Charcot's techniques were controversial; commentators have disagreed whether Wittman suffered from a physical condition like epileptic seizures, from mass hysteria resulting from conditions at La Salpêtrière, or was merely faking the symptoms. She is depicted in A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière and was the subject of a 2004 Per Olov Enquist novel.
context_section_description: Wittman is depicted in André Brouillet's 1887 painting A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière, where she is used as a demonstration during one of Charcot's weekly lectures. This depiction made her "a model of hysteria at that time". The painting is usually interpreted as showing Wittman undergoing a hysteric fit while under hypnosis. However, a 2020 paper argues that the apparatus visible next to Charcot is in fact a du Bois-Reymond induction device, and that the painting thus depicts Wittman in hypnotic lethargy, with Charcot having electrically induced the "ecstatic" expression on her face.
  Per Olov Enquist's 2004 novel Boken om Blanche och Marie (The book about Blanche and Marie) takes the form of purported lost journals by Wittman. The novel takes considerable historical liberties: Wittman is portrayed in a sexual relationship with Charcot, and later becomes Marie Curie's assistant and confidante. The novel was well received; with its use of Curie's investigations of radiation as a metaphor for human experience praised. However, a 2007 letter published in The Lancet criticized the novel for the "slandering of an unfortunate patient and two icons of science", including the invention of the relationship between Charcot and Wittman.
caption: Wittman (in white) depicted in A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière
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