Antoine-Athanase Royer-Collard

Life & Legacy

Antoine-Athanase Royer-Collard (7 February 1768 – 27 November 1825) was a French medical doctor and psychiatrist. He was a younger brother to philosopher Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard (1763–1845).
Royer-Collard was born in Sompuis, France. He studied medicine in Paris, and in 1802 received his doctorate with a dissertation on amenorrhea ("Essai sur l'aménorrhée, ou suppression du flux menstruel"). In 1806, he was named chief physician at the Charenton mental asylum, and in 1816 became a professor of forensic medicine at the University of Paris. In 1819, he was appointed to the first chair of médecine mentale. Among his better known students were Antoine Laurent Bayle and Louis-Florentin Calmeil.
In 1803, he founded the periodical "Bibliothèque médicale". In 1820, he was elected a member of the Académie nationale de médecine. After his death at Paris in 1825, his position at the Charenton was filled by Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol.
One of his famous patients at the Charenton was Donatien Alphonse François de Sade (1740–1814), better known as Marquis de Sade, who spent the last eleven years of his life incarcerated at the asylum. Royer-Collard protested against de Sade's imprisonment at the Charenton, believing him to be sane, and asked that he be placed in a conventional prison.