3-089-634 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Brière de Boismont, docteur, aliéniste, 1861-1869. Portrait of physician and psychiatrist Dr. Alexandre Jacques François Brière de Boismont (1797-1881). In 1845 he published "Des Hallucinations, ou Histoire raisonnée des apparitions, des visions, des songes, de l'extase, du magnétisme et du somnambulisme" (On Hallucinations, or A Reasoned History of Apparitions, Visions, Dreams, Ecstasy, Magnetism, and Somnambulism), a landmark study of hallucinations, of which he considered were a significant part of humanity's psychological history.