[Dr. John Baptiste Edouard Gélineau].
With this brief review we honor the memory of the great French doctor Jean Baptiste Edouard Gélineau. Dr. Gélineau was born on December 23, 1828 at Blaye, Gironde, close to the Bordeaux region. His name is connected with the first clinical description of the disease for which he, both by the right of the primacy as well as ad valorem of his first two names, coined the name "narcolepsy". He was the first to notice the intrinsically evanescent symptoms of narcolepsy, such as excessive daytime somnolence, imperative sleep habits and cataplexy or "astasia" as he called it, and incorporate them into a single clinical syndrome. In 1881 Gélineau discussed Kaffe's case of "maladie du sommeil" as a proof of the existence of the new disease described a year before. As a good clinical observer Gélineau noticed the close relation of emotional engagement and astasia. His attitude was that narcolepsy was a nosologic entity, a disease sui generis, but admitted that it could appear purely as a symptom only. This was in discordance with the views in England where (in 1928) Dr. Samuel Alexander Kinnier Wilson repudiated such convictions; in 1930 Lhermitte still shared the same opinion. Gélineau differentiated narcolepsy from epilepsy with the elegance of clinical reasoning. Overall, Gélineau described three elements of the narcoleptic pentade. Sleep paralyses were first described by Mitchell in 1876, and were first attributed to narcolepsy by Wilson in 1928; in 1930 Lhermitte first described hypnapompic, and Daniels, in 1934, hypnagogic sleep paralysis. Hypnagogic hallucinations were described by Maury in 1848 and subsequently by de Saint Denis in 1867. In twenties they were thoroughly studiesed during the epidemic encephalitis and after the Big War in 1922 by Levy. The life story of Dr. Gélineau covers multivarious activities. As a young student of the Rochefort Navy Medical School he took part in the fight against colera which deluged the city of La Rochelle. In 1849 he became the "Intern" of the Navy Hospital and next year a "Surgeon of the Third Class". As a Navy surgeon he visited French colonies in the Indian ocean: first the Reunion island and then Mayotte island of the Commores Archipelago. Of this period he wrote "Voyage a i'lle de la Réunion", memoirs published much later, in 1905, in which he described colonial life and abolition of slavery. The story of Elise, a beauteous Creole woman, a concubine of a young naval Commander, who delivered a child that soon died, inexorably points to the autobiographic character of his work. He defended a doctoral thesis "Aperçu Medical de I'lle de Mayotte" at Montpellier University School of Medicine in 1858, using the data collected during his year-and-a-half stay on a Mayotte island; at that time he was a "Navy Surgeon of the Second Class". For his dedication in fighting against epidemics that broke out during the French-German war in 1870 he was nominated for the Legion of Honor, but received it only later. In 1871 Gélineau introduced "Doctor Gélineau's tablets" for the treatment of epilepsy (contained bromide and arsenic). He was a member of the Société de Médicine, Société d' Hypnologie, La-Société Française d' Hygiène, and a few others. After retirement at the age of 72, Gélineau switched to wine production, continuing the family tradition; for the quality of his Bordeaux wines he was awarded gold medals at the Anvers and Paris Exhibitions. Dr. Gélineau died on March 2, 1906, at Argeles Gazost in Pyrnees honored by the titles of Chevalier de la Légion d' Honneur, Officier d'Academie and Commander of Nichan of the Ottoman Empire.
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D004827:Epilepsy / Q000266:history; D005602:France; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D009290:Narcolepsy / Q000266:history