Dottor Ladame — La Névrose Hypnotique e l'Opposizione a Donato/en
Page title: Doctor Ladame — La Névrose Hypnotique and the Opposition to Donato
The Doctor Ladame is the Swiss physician author of the book La Névrose Hypnotique, which Donato in his journal defines as «a work of bad faith» — one of the most vivid examples of how the official medical science of the time tried to appropriate Donato's results by attributing them to others.
The context: the priority dispute
In the journal Le Magnétisme, Donato dedicates a long passage to the question of scientific priority. He writes that in Switzerland his performances prompted the writing of a book by Doctor Ladame: «La névrose hypnotique, a work of bad faith in which the author attributes his absurd ideas to me and takes credit for what I had taught to his initiator, the pharmacist Strohl.»
Donato is particularly indignant because Ladame would have also falsified geography: «I have never been to Saint-Imier in my entire life. And let no one say that the city was mistaken. The childish nonsense that Doctor Ladame published is nothing but the sad fruit of a poor imagination. It is smoke without fire, but with an impostor.»
Historical significance
The Ladame case illustrates a recurring pattern in Donato's era: academic doctors attended the sessions of stage hypnotists, collected observations, and then published them as their own, often changing details or attributing the phenomena to pathologies (the «névrose hypnotique» of the title) to delegitimize the original practitioner.
Donato responds to this pattern with his journal: by publishing the scientific reports, the letters from subjects, and the observations of doctors himself, he builds an archive of his own priority that cannot be appropriated.
Sources
- Donato (Alfred d'Hont), Le Magnétisme — Journal de Psycho-Physiologie, Paris 1886 — fasc. 1-50, fasc. 50-104, fasc. 104-154, fasc. 154+
See also
- Donato — Il Padre della Fascinazione
- Dottor Marc Dufour — Il Testimone Scientifico di Donato
- Donato — La Rivista Le Magnétisme (1880-1886)
| Donato e la Fascinazione — Navigazione ISI-CNV | |
|
Il personaggio
Il metodo |
I protagonisti della rivista
L'eredità
|