Étienne Pariset

Life & Legacy

Étienne Pariset (5 August 1770 in Grand – 3 July 1847 in Paris) was a French medical doctor and psychiatrist.
In 1805 he received his medical doctorate in Paris with the thesis Dissertation sur les hémorrhagies utérines ("Dissertation on uterine hemorrhages"). In 1814 he joined Bicêtre Hospital as a physician, and in 1819 he was named head of department for mental illness at the hospital. In 1822, he was appointed perpetual secretary at the Académie Nationale de Médecine, a position he maintained up until his death. From January 1826, he was associated with the Salpêtrière Hospital, where he succeeded Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol as physician for the insane.
In 1819–22, he distinguished himself in his work combatting yellow fever in Spain, and from 1828 onward he conducted research of infectious diseases in Syria and Egypt. In the latter country, he became good friends with archaeologist Jean-François Champollion.

In 1819, he became part of the Commission pour l'amélioration du sort des aliénés (Commission for improving the lot of the insane), whose members included Esquirol, Philippe Pinel and Antoine-Athanase Royer-Collard. In 1845, he was a founding member of the Société Protectrice des Animaux (SPA), serving as its first president up until his death in 1847.