Louis Delasiauve

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Louis Jean Francois Delasiauve (October 14, 1804 - June 5, 1893) was a French psychiatrist who was a native of Garennes-sur-Eure. In 1830 he earned his doctorate in Paris, and for the next eight years practiced medicine in Ivry. Afterwards he worked at the Bicêtre Hospital, and later became a director at the Salpêtrière, where he worked with epileptic and mentally handicapped patients. One of his better known assistants was Désiré-Magloire Bourneville (1840-1909).

Delasiauve was a pioneer of child psychiatry and an advocate concerning education for the mentally handicapped. He is best known for his research of epilepsy, and described three distinct types of the disease:

Idiopathic epilepsy: Absence of physical lesions; fundamentally a true neurotic disorder.
Symptomatic epilepsy: Cerebral lesions being present; convulsions being a symptom and not the disease.
Sympathetic epilepsy: Produced by the irradiation of abnormal impressions which can have their seat in all parts of the body except the central nervous system.