French psychiatrists on the causes of madness, 1800-1870: an ambiguous attitude before an epistemological obstacle.

Modern psychiatry was born in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At that time French psychiatrists had much to learn. One of their interests was in recognizing the causes of madness which they divided into physical and moral. This article aims to describe this moment in the history of medicine and to demonstrate how ancient ideas were reworked by these alienists. Above all it is argued that alienists struggled with a kind of disease that was regarded as unacceptable at the time.