ABSTRACT
Theodore Gericault had numerous contacts with the medical profession during his work on the Raft, notably with the ship's surgeon Henri Savigny with whom he spent much time in 1818–19, learning from his and Alexandre Correard's accounts of insanity, delirium, and hallucination on board. Etienne-jean-georget, born in 1795, was three years younger than Gericault, and belonged to the third generation of alienists; the generational relation of the three doctors, Philippe Pinel, Jean-Etienne Esquirol, and Georget, was paralleled by that between Jacques-Louis David, Antoine-Jean Gros, and Gericault. In 1820, Georget had opposed the vitalists, a body of medical theorists far more acceptable to the regime, in their refusal to invoke "organization as the sole cause of the operations of living beings". Georget seems to have respected and even admired the emotional capacities of his patients. The portraits were certainly consistent in spirit with a major illustrative project of Esquirol's.
