Introduction
Benjamin Ball (April 20, 1833 – February 23, 1893) was an English-born French psychiatrist, Professor of Mental Medicine in the Paris Faculty.
He was born at Naples, his father being an Englishman and his mother a native of Switzerland. He became a naturalised Frenchman in 1849, and spent the whole of his professional life in Paris.
He studied medicine under Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours and Jean-Martin Charcot and was an assistant of Charles Lasègue at the Salpêtrière Hospital. During his internat he was Laureate of the Academy of Medicine (Prix Portal, in collaboration with Charcot). He became doctor of medicine in 1862. In 1877 Benjamin Ball was the first to be appointed to the "Clinical Chair of Mental and Cerebral Diseases" in the Paris Faculty, to the detriment of his rival Valentin Magnan.
In collaboration with Jules Bernard Luys, he founded in 1881 the journal L'Encéphale.
Ball is the author of numerous works relating to mental diseases such as On erotic insanity (La folie érotique), and On persecution deliria (Du délire des persécutions, as well as Lessons on Mental Illnesses (Leçon sur les maladies mentales). In 1885, he published a trail-blazing treatrise On morphinomania (La morphinomanie), in which he evidenced the toxic effects of cocaine which were not absolutely acknowledged at the time.
Selected written works
- Des Embolies pulmonaires (Paris 1862)
- Du rhumatisme viscéral (Paris 1866)
- La médecine mentale à travers les siècles (Paris 1879)
- La morphinomanie (Paris 1885; 2nd. edition Paris 1888)
- La folie érotique (Paris 1888)
- Du délire des persécutions, ou Maladie de Lasègue (Paris 1890)
- Leçons sur les maladies mentales (Paris 1890)