Gilles de la Tourette began his internship in 1884, working "at a superhuman pace, publishing, teaching and practicing clinical medicine". He became a student, amanuensis, and house physician of his mentor, the influential contemporary neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, director of the Salpêtrière Hospital. Charcot also helped him to advance in his academic career. Tourette studied and lectured in psychotherapy, hysteria and medical and legal ramifications of mesmerism. Colleagues and historians have described Gilles de la Tourette as a "highly intelligent, if irascible, character". In 1884, Charcot asked Gilles de la Tourette to work on motor disorders; latah, myriachit and the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine had recently been described, and Gilles de la Tourette believed the conditions were related and separate from chorea. Gilles de la Tourette described the symptoms of Tourette syndrome in one patient and collected previous observations of similar cases, and in 1885 he published a further nine cases using the name "maladie des tics" for the disorder. Charcot renamed the syndrome "Gilles de la Tourette's illness" in his honor, although Gilles de la Tourette's work was not well received at Salpêtrière. Gilles de la Tourette published an article on hysteria in the German Army, which angered Bismarck, and a further article about unhygienic conditions in the floating hospitals on the riverThames. With Gabriel Legué he analyzed 17th century abbess Jeanne des Anges' account of her hysteria that was allegedly based on her unrequited love for a priest Urbain Grandier, who was later burned for witchcraft.
Gilles de la Tourette married his cousin Marie Detrois on 2 August 1887 in Loudon. Paul Brouardel and Charcot were witnesses. They had four children, three of whom lived to adulthood. In 1893, a former female patient who was later revealed to have psychosis shot Gilles de la Tourette in the neck, claiming one of his colleagues had hypnotized her against her will. His mentor, Charcot, had died recently, and his young son had also died recently. Although he recovered from the shooting and continued to work and organize lectures, after these events, Gilles de la Tourette began to display symptoms of severe depression. After 1893, his mental health noticeably declined. In 1901, Charcot's son, Jean-Baptiste, convinced Gilles de la Tourette to travel to Switzerland on a ruse, and had him committed to a psychiatric hospital, where Gilles de la Tourette was diagnosed with tertiary syphilis. His condition worsened and he was forced to resign. His wife and colleagues were not forthcoming about the causes of his internment. He died on 22 May 1904 with advanced dementia at the Lausanne Psychiatric Hospital in Cery from what was labeled a status seizure, and that his wife described as apoplexy. Lees states that "Gilles de la Tourette died of general paralysis of the insane ".
Writings
Gilles de la Tourette published sixteen papers on hysteria, including:
Les actualités médicales, les états neurasthéniques
Leçons de clinique thérapeutique sur les maladies du système nerveux
L'hypnotisme et les états analogues au point de vue médico-légal
Les actualités médicales. Formes cliniques et traitement des myélites syphilitiques' convulsifs
Traité clinique et thérapeutique de l'hystérie d'après l'enseignement de la Salpêtrière
Books
Walusinski O. Georges Gilles de la Tourette: Beyond the Eponym, a Biography. Oxford University Press.
