Marie Wittman

Marie "Blanche" Wittman (often spelled Wittmann; April 15, 1859 – 1913) was a French woman known as one of the hysteria patients of Jean-Martin Charcot. She was institutionalized in La Salpêtrière in 1877, and was treated by Charcot until his death in 1893. She later became a radiology assistant at the hospital, which resulted in amputations of her arms due to radiation poisoning. She is depicted in A Clinical Lesson at the Salpôtrière (1887) and was the subject of a 2004 Per Olov Enquist novel. She would experience generalized stiffness, flexion, finger extension and tetanic contractions, downward deviation of the eyes and foaming at the mouth during the epileptoid stage. Her attacks began seven days after admission and she believed to use use use ether days after. She died in 1913, and her story has been made into a film, "The Haunting of Blanche Wittman" (2012). The film is based on Wittman's account of her experiences in the hospital.