{{short description|French physician}} {{Infobox scientist | name = Jules Cotard | image = Jules_Cotard.jpg | birth_date = 1 June 1840 | birth_place = Issoudun, Indre, France | death_date = {{death date and age|1889|08|19|1840|06|01|df=y}} | death_place = Vanves, Seine-et-Oise, France | ethnicity = | field = Neurology and psychiatry | work_institutions = Hospice de la Salpêtrière | alma_mater = | doctoral_advisor = | doctoral_students = | known_for = Cotard delusion | prizes = | religion = | footnotes = | signature = }} '''Jules Cotard''' (1 June 1840 – 19 August 1889) was a French physician who practiced neurology and psychiatry. He is best known for first describing the Cotard delusion, a patient's delusional belief that they are dead, do not exist, or do not have bodily organs.

==Biography==

===Education=== He studied medicine in Paris and later went on to work as an intern at Hospice de la Salpêtrière, where he worked for, among others, Jean-Martin Charcot.

===Career=== Cotard became particularly interested in cerebrovascular accidents (commonly known as 'strokes') and their consequences and undertook autopsies to better understand how these affected the brain. In 1869, Cotard left Salpêtrière, and at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, he joined an infantry regiment as a regimental surgeon. Cotard moved to the town of Vanves in 1874, where he remained for the last 15 years of his life. He made particular contributions to the understanding of diabetes and delusions. In August 1889, Cotard's daughter contracted diphtheria and he reportedly refused to leave her bedside for 15 days until she recovered. He eventually contracted diphtheria himself and died on 19 August.

==In popular culture== Jules Cotard served as the real-life model for the character of [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.32000006731816;view=1up;seq=11 Dr. Cottard] in the Marcel Proust novel ''In Search of Lost Time''.

In the film ''Synecdoche, New York'', protagonist Caden Cotard is a reference to the Cotard delusion.

==External links and references== * {{Internet Archive author |sname=Jules Cotard}} *{{cite journal |last=Bourgeois |first=M |date=December 1980 |title=[Jules Cotard and his syndrome a 100 years later] |journal=Annales médico-psychologiques |volume=138 |issue=10 |pages=1165–80 |location = FRANCE| issn = 0003-4487| pmid = 7013604 }} *{{cite journal |doi=10.1192/bjp.160.3.416 |last=Förstl |first=H |author2=Beats B |date=March 1992 |title=Charles Bonnet's description of Cotard's delusion and reduplicative paramnesia in an elderly patient (1788) |journal=British Journal of Psychiatry |volume=160 |issue=3|pages=416–8 |location = ENGLAND| issn = 0007-1250| pmid = 1562875 |url=http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/240152/3/240152.pdf }} *{{cite journal |last=Pearn |first=J |author2=Gardner-Thorpe C |date=May 2002 |title=Jules Cotard (1840-1889): his life and the unique syndrome which bears his name |journal=Neurology |volume=58 |issue=9 |pages=1400–3 |location = United States| issn = 0028-3878| pmid = 12011289 | doi=10.1212/wnl.58.9.1400 }} *{{cite journal |last=Pearn |first=John |author2=Gardner-Thorpe Christopher |date=May 2003 |title=A biographical note on Marcel Proust's Professor Cottard |journal=Journal of Medical Biography |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=103–6 |location = England|doi=10.1177/096777200301100212 | issn = 0967-7720| pmid = 12717539 |s2cid=38635220 }} *{{cite journal |last=Nagy |first=Agnes |author2=Vörös Viktor |author3=Tényi Tamás |date=October 2008 |title=[About the Cotard's syndrome] |journal=Neuropsychopharmacologia Hungarica |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=213–24 |location = Hungary| issn = 1419-8711| pmid = 19213200 }} * {{cite journal | last1 = Berrios | first1 = GE | last2 = Luque | first2 = R | year = 1995 | title = Cotard's Delusion or Syndrome?: A Conceptual History | pmid = 7648846 | journal = Comprehensive Psychiatry | volume = 36 | issue = 3| pages = 218–23 | doi = 10.1016/0010-440x(95)90085-a }}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cotard, Jules}} Category:1840 births Category:1889 deaths Category:People from Issoudun Category:French neuroscientists Category:French military personnel of the Franco-Prussian War