[Philippe Pinel in 1784. A "foreign" physician in front of the Paris Faculty of Medicine].

Philippe Pinel (1745-1826), the most famous French alienist was forbidden to practice medicine in Paris during the "Ancien Régime" as he had obtained his doctorate from a provincial faculty. Having been twice an unfortunate candidate to a competition which would have allowed him to resume his studies, he was also rejected in 1784 for functions at Court. The circumstances of these failures are reinvestigated here in the light of various documents some of which unpublished.