TITLE: CHARCOT - In the Mind's Eye
2001 11X23 INCHES

JEAN-BAPTISTE CHARCOT:
1867-1936, French explorer.

"The Polar Gentleman", as Scott called him, was the son of a renown and
wealthy French neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot, 1825-93, who developed the
Salpêtrière, Paris. It was the greatest clinic of the time for diseases of the
nervous system. His insight into the nature of hysteria was credited by Sigmund
Freud, the elder Charcot’s pupil, as having contributed to Freud’s early
psychoanalytic formulations on the subject. Graduating as a medical doctor, Charcot
did not wish to follow in his father’s footsteps. He embarked on a career of
Polar exploration.

His first expedition, 1903-05, was organized with the assistance of the
French government. He surveyed the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. On
his return, his wife divorced him. The cause: desertion. Married again in
1907, his new wife had to promise never to oppose his expeditions. Charcot then
built the most modern polar ship, to that date, the Puorquoi-Pas?. In 1908-10,
he extended his work along the Antarctic peninsula, charting the unknown
coastline for 1240 miles.

From 1926-36 he made regular oceanographic voyages to the Greenland
Sea. On September 16th, 1936 he perished with all of his crew but one, when the
Puorquoi-Pas? sank off the coast of Iceland.