By ROMEO VITALLI
1893 was not Gilles de la Tourette’s year.
Not only was he devastated by the death of his son Jean to meningitis but also by the loss of his mentor, the prominent neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, to a lung disease shortly afterward. Sadly, there was even more to come for the internationally recognized neurologist.
On December 6, a young woman, dressed in black, rang the doorbell at the Rue de l’Universite apartment building where Dr. Tourette lived. His valet told her that the doctor was out but she insisted on waiting for him. After about fifteen minutes, Tourette returned from seeing a patient at a local hospital and she immediately confronted him in his consulting room. The woman, Rose Kamper, had been one of his patients at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospitaland demanded money from him for “ruining her life”. He recognized that she was emotionally disturbed and offered to have her readmitted to hospital under his care. After she failed to reply, Tourette got up to leave the room when the woman took out a revolver and shot him in the back of the neck.
Rose Kamper made no attempt at escape after the shooting and simply sat in the hall until the police came. She reportedly muttered, “I know, that what I just have done was wrong, but it was necessary and now I am satisfied. At least one of them has now paid for the others (the other doctors who had treated her).” While her victim’s injury wasn’t life-threatening, an attempt made on the life of one of the most prominent physicians in Paris certainly made news.