, a major medical figure of the end of the 19th century, charcot offers literature the broad spectrum of a nosological paradigm (the Great Hystery), an penetrating view based on aesthetic thinking (the Rubens possessed), and a technique intended to be exported in fields other than strictly medical (the hypnose). The ‘Maître de la SalPêtrière’ feeds as much the literary description as a political thinking, draws the contours of a pathological form converted into an aesthetic object, and reactivates the mythic pattern of Possession, which, in order to be stigmatised, is nevertheless structuring. The diversity of literary interpretations of the SalPêtrière performance makes it possible to envisage works ranging from claimed naturalism (Zola, Bonnetain, Lemonnier, Claretie, Daudet, etc.) to clinical fantasmagorie (Maupasser, Huysmans, Mirbeau, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Lermina, Lorrain, Rashilde, etc.). through less well-known works, but delivering the keys to the evolution of a scientific imaginary (Hennique, Nizet, Trézenik, Lesueur, Germain, Dubarry, Epheyre, etc.).