Paul Regnard (1850 - 1927)

Paul Regnard

Paul Regnard, full name Paul Marie Léon Regnard, was a French physician, physiologist and photographer, and teacher.

He became a trainee at the hospital in 1874 and received his MD degree in 1878. Paul Regnard was deputy director of the Hautes Etudes Laboratories, and from 1878 taught general physiology at the newly founded National Agronomic Institute and later became its director (1902). He was also from 1895 a member of the Academy of Medicine in the section of biological sciences.

Regnard was one of the first practitioners of medical photography, particularly photographs of the mentally ill. Together with Désiré-Magloire Borneville, he directed the photographic service at the Salpêtrière Hospital of Paris, established by the psychiatrist J.C. Charcot (1825-1893). Numerous photographs were published in the book Iconographie Photographyique de la Salpêtrière. Regnard was a tireless researcher. He was one of the first naturalists to study the effects of atmospheric pressure on microbial metabolism. The scientist made a detailed historical and bibliographical survey of descriptions of possession and witchcraft through the ages, focusing on well-documented cases.

Regnar was particularly interested in the physical manifestations described by contemporaries: fainting spells, tetany, paresthesias, signs that could only be interpreted as diabolical or at least miraculous. All these signs Regnard had already observed, photographed, and treated at the Salpêtrière Hospital in the department of J.M. Charcot, to whom he dedicated this work, and so it was from the perspective of nascent psychiatry that Regnard analyzed these historical cases.

For his services, Regnard was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1884, then an officer in 1900.