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Pathographies of outstanding people are not too rare, especially of artists and writers. Many of them came into being under the influence of psychoanalysis—this is particularly true of the German literature in this field.
Rarely is attention paid to analogous cases among scientists. This may be due, on one hand, to the possible fact that they are not so prominent in the public's eye, and, on the other hand, to the fact that such research to be understood presupposes familiarity with the specific scientific domain under consideration.
One outstanding case, hitherto neglected as far as my knowledge goes, is Auguste Comte, the French sociologist, to whom the science of sociology owes more than its name.1 The life of Auguste Comte, together with his extensive works of about 8,000 pages or more, should be the domain for a pathologic study, as Comte was doubtless a mental case.
Born in 1798, Comte, before reaching his thirtieth year, suffered what could be classified as a nervous breakdown. He refers to this incident in the “Personal Preface” to the 6th volume of his Cours de Philosophie Postive, published in 1830, as follows:
“The initial flight of this work (the just mentioned “Cours”) was painfully interrupted by a cerebral crisis resulting from the fatal concurrence