Henri-Étienne Beaunis

Studies

He studied in Rouen until he began his medical specialisation in Paris. He obtained his medical doctoral degree in Montpellier in 1856. His thesis was focused on habits and was published under the name of De l'habitude en général. He presented his vision of habits and pleaded for people to see habits as ways of improving ourselves, and not as repetitive acts that allows us to please ourselves in rest and happiness. His father was not an enthusiast for the arts and encouraged him to pursue the path of medicine. Henri-Étienne Beaunis chose medicine and enlisted himself in the French army. He served in Algeria many times and came back to France with the title of médecin-major de deuxième classe in 1860. His work Anatomie générale et physiologie du système lymphatique was presented as a thesis for his aggrégation de médecine in anatomical and physiological sciences. This was an obligatory step in France to become a professor. He then became professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Strasbourg.

Early career

Five years after he became professor at Strasbourg, he published a book called Nouveaux éléments d'anatomie descriptive et d'embryologie with his colleague Abel Bouchard, who was also a medic in the army. The book was a synthesis of the anatomical and embryological knowledge for students of science and medicine. The authors used their knowledge of German to stay in touch with the latest discoveries, which were often published in German during this period. Beaunis wrote the sections on osteology, articulations, myology, viscera, senses, the human body in general, and embryology. Bouchard wrote the sections on angiology and neurology.

In 1870 and 1871, Beaunis underwent the Franco-Prussian War which led to the French side losing a part of Alsace-Lorraine. In 1871, he published in the Gazette médicale de Paris extracts of his diary describing his life during this period and more specifically during the Siege of Strasbourg. He described the intellectual climate that was developing before the war and the progressive opening to scientific dialogs both in Germany and France, especially in the fields of physiology and medicine. After his involvement as a medic, the Faculty of Medicine of Strasbourg was transferred to Nancy, where he obtained the chair of Physiology, following the disappearance of E. Küss, who was the previous holder.

Works in physiology and anatomy

In 1874, he published his observations on a case of Situs inversus, a particular condition in which internal organs are misplaced in the body. His most massive work of this period was Nouveaux Élements de physiologie humaine comprenant les principes de la physiologie comparée et de la physiologie générale, a book that synthesises the knowledge in physiology at that time, including knowledge in physiological psychology, which was usually left to philosophers. Supplementary editions were published in 1881 and 1888. In Nancy, he published with Abel Bouchard Précis d'anatomie et de dissection in 1877. He considers this book as a sequel to Nouveaux éléments d'anatomie descriptive et d'embryologie.

Since the publication of Nouveaux Élements de physiologie humaine, Beaunis had demonstrated his interest in including psychological processes in the general field of physiology. In 1884, he started publishing texts that explored this question specifically. He published De la justesse et de la fausseté de la voix, a treatise that exposes amongst other ideas the idea that speech in man is the very complex expression of communicative capacities that are present in other animals and that speech is generated through mechanical processes involving mouth and throat muscles. His laboratory started being well equipped in 1876, after which he started publishing scientific results that were collectively published in 1884. This collective work is called Recherches expérimentales sur les conditions de l'activité cérébrale et sur la physiologie des nerfs and describes some of the works of Albert Küss, Albert René, Maxime Drouot, Charles Mayard and Eugène Gley. The majority of these works had been published in the Revue médicale de l'Est or the Gazette des hôpitaux. The experiments described were performed in the laboratory of Beaunis. They consist in studying cerebral physiology, which would today be called neurophysiology. The research performed during this period in the laboratory include works on pneumotherapy, the physiological effects of nicotine, diuretic agents, the effects of cognitive processes on pulse, aneurysms, respiration, muscle contractions and reaction time to sensorial stimuli.

His works in physiology led him to gain interest in hypnosis. He joined Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault, Hippolyte Bernheim and Jules Liégeois to defend the theses of the Nancy School against those of the Salpêtrière School of Jean Martin Charcot. The Nancy School thought that hypnosis was a state similar to sleep produced by suggestion, while the Salpêtrière School thought that it was a pathological state similar to hysteria. In 1887, he published Le somnambulisme provoqué: études physiologiques et psychologiques that he originally wanted to include in Recherches expérimentales sur les conditions de l'activité cérébrale et sur la physiologie des nerfs. The pressure of his editors encouraged him to create a separate work.

After this publication on hypnosis, he continued to publish general works in physiology and psychophysiology. In 1889, he published Les sensations internes, a synthesis of internal senses other than the five classically studied senses which underlie physiological mechanisms. In 1890, he published L'évolution du système nerveux. In 1889, he founded at the Sorbonne the first French psychology laboratory. In 1894, he founded with Alfred Binet the scientific journal L'Année psychologique. In 1893, he published in his Travaux du Laboratoire de Psychologie Physiologique, a description of two cases of synesthesia.

Works on art

Henri-Étienne Beaunis maintained throughout from his college years to his death a passion for arts. In 1917, he completed a work started at least in 1891 that consisted in traducing the theatre of Eschyle. He also published some novels under the pseudonym of Paul Abaur. He died at Le Cannet.

Memoir

Serge Nicolas, who wrote the most complete biography of Henri-Étienne Beaunis, had access to a small part of the memoir written by Henri-Étienne Beaunis. The complete memoir has not been recovered yet. In the biography he wrote, Serge Nicolas formulates the wish that his writing be recovered and made public.