MOREL Bénédicte Auguste Traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l’espèce humaine.

Garrison-Morton, 4933.1; Heirs of Hippocrates, 1721 (incomplete copy missing the atlas) ; Semelaigne I, 342-351.

First edition.

A rebellious and independent spirit, Morel was an enemy of routine from 1856 onwards, “ne songe plus qu’à la dégénérescence, passe son temps à circuler de côté et d’autre pour étudier les types et vérifier les lois qu’il a formulées”.

For him, all degenerates present, despite their differences, the same impossibility “de propager dans des conditions normales la grande et unique famille du genre humain”.The insane confined in asylums are, in almost all cases, degenerates, and the degeneration may be hereditary or acquired.

He enjoyed an immense reputation, and in 1864 he was called to Munich to work with the “Prince héritier de Bavière… et son regard l’avait frappé. Tandis que le roi Louis Ier s’écriait en admirant son fils: “Ce sont les yeux passionnés d’Adonis”, Morel simply said : “Ce sont des yeux qui annoncent la folie”. (Semelaigne, Les Pionniers de la psychiatrie française, T. I, p. 342).

“Morel was instrumental in developing the psychiatric theory of degeneration and fully reports his findings in the present work. It was his belief that mental degeneration was caused by abnormal deviations, such as hereditary defects, which ultimately resulted in extinction. The chief caus of degeneration was heredity but other causes included social conditions, congenital defects, immorality, pathological behavior, epidemic diseases, and drug abuse or addiction” (Heirs). “The main support for the theory of mental illness as regression which dominated psychiatric practice for several decades. Morel described and illustrated the nature, causes, and signs of human degeneration… The atlas reproduces by lithography some of the earliest photogra phs of the insane” (Garrison-Morton).

Wear to the atlas volume, plate IV with abrasion in the white without affecting the image, title with hole in the white.

A working copy.

Provenance : A.C. Pacheco e Silva (book plate and signature).