ABSTRACT
In certain respects Philippe Pinel's and his students' approach to madness was nothing new. As far as descriptions of madness itself were concerned, D. Diderot's and d'Alembert's great Encyclopedie might already seem to have had the last word, although these descriptions also enshrine some time-hallowed assumptions. Pinel was an experienced writer who had honed his literary style to make his ideas accessible; but it was not just a question of style, or of enlightened philanthropy, or of new classifications, or of the equation of madness with the passions. The Traite obliquely drew attention, without reference to theology, to divisions in everybody, which were not merely contingent or periodic, but constitutive. Pinel's was closer to that of a natural scientist, in the spirit of detached, enquiring Enlightenment, with its promise of new knowledge.
