Jacques Ferrand

Who is Jacques Ferrand?

Jacques Ferrand was a French physician born around 1575 in Agen, France. He is famous for his treatise on melancholia, Traicte de l'essence et guerison de l'amour ou de la melancholie erotique, an early psychological work on melancholia. It was for this work he was put on trial for by the Inquisition. The treatise on erotic melancholia may have been read by the French writer, Eugene Sue, whose character "Jacques Ferrand" ["Mysteries of Paris"], actually dies from an unrequited passion. Sue's father had been a distinguished doctor, and Sue himself was engaged in the medical profession when he was a young man.