Wikipedia

Jean-Albert Dadas

Jean-Albert Dadas (May 10, 1860 – November 28, 1907), also known as the "Running Man" and "The First Fuguer", was a French gas fitter renowned for being one of the most notable cases of dromomania, a psychological condition characterized by an irresistible urge to wander with no discernible reason or recollection. Dadas, the presumed Patient Zero of the compelling wandering epidemic that swept through Europe, is a perplexing figure at the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Dadas gained prominence as the first documented case of "pathological tourism". His life was marked by an irresistible compulsion to wander and travel, embarking on extensive and often perilous journeys which captivated the public's attention. His condition is remarked and documented through the case study and treatment performed by the learned medical student, Philippe Tissié (1852–1935).[1]

Photo of Jean-Albert Dadas

Biography edit

Dadas was born on May 10, 1860 in Bordeaux, France to a family of gas workers. After enduring a head injury at the age of eight, Dadas experienced brain damage that is speculated to be the cause of his incessant wandering in his later years.[2] Working in a gas company by the age of twelve, Dadas began to constantly wander without warning or understanding of why he was wandering or that he was even wandering at all. This is a condition known as dromomania, or an uncontrollable and inexplicable urge to wander or travel for long distances and long periods of time with no recollection of the journeys.[3] Dadas would hear about a location and set out to travel there. These bouts weren't planned, but Dadas knew to garner a bit of money and some identification papers before traveling. However, he seemingly always lost them during his journey.[4] Dadas wandered without identification papers and often without the ability to remember his own identity. Jean Albert-Dadas knew not who he was or why he wandered during bouts of Fugue, he only knew where his next destination would be. Often times, Dadas would be arrested or left with no money, forced to do small jobs such as scrubbing pots and farming in the places he'd traveled to and make it home using the money made from these ventures.[5] Dadas traveled as far as Algeria, Spain, Bohemia and Austria. When awoken from his bouts of dromomania, Albert would act as if he was waking up from a deep slumber; incoherent, confused, and surprised at where he would find himself.[5] Upon finding himself in unfamiliar places, Dadas would report to the French Consul or the nearest police station for aid where he would obtain just enough for a fourth class train ticket or permission to return home after retrieving identification papers.[4] However, he would often hear of places during his train ride home and subsequently change his direction of travel to wherever his new destination was. Albert begged, toiled, and scrounged to fund his travels. Locals often provided him with bread and pennies to tide him over.[6]

Jean-Albert Dadas would enlist in the 127th Infantry Regiment serving as a cook where he learned to read, but deserted shortly after with a childhood friend.[6] According to Albert, his condition of constant fugue ultimately led to his arrest for nihilism in Moscow during the great sweep and panic following the assassination of the Russian Czar on the 13th of March in 1887, though it is debated to be a false recollection and simply a product of Albert's imagination. Albert's arrest and subsequent return to his regiment found him guilty of desertion and landed him the punishment of hard penal labor for three years, though he spent most of his sentence in the hospital for pain and was released early due to good conduct and an ear injury.[4]

Dadas is described by Phillipe Tissie as a timid and shy man, but a talented and reliable worker when he is in his "awake" state and not traveling endlessly. Dadas never drank, even during his instances of fugue, and never engaged in sexual promiscuity, as he was chaste. Despite this, Tissie regards Dadas as an "inveterate masturbator". Dadas' everyday life and routine was not particularly notable or eventful, but the days leading up to one of his travels were filled with agony. Plagued by days of non-stop headaches, excessive sweating, insomnia, heightened anxiety, and an unrestrained amount of masturbation in the night, Dadas would endure days of pain and discomfort and then immediately set out for the next destination. He caused very little trouble during his travels in his state of fugue, and he remained clean, well-mannered, and presentable. Dadas hated his condition and, as Tissie regards it, his "imperious need to travel". Dadas believed his fugue was preventing him from leading a normal life, yet felt a sort of whimsy from traveling to places he had heard of as a child.[4]

When Dadas would wake from his dromomania, while he often had a general sense of where he was, he would have no idea how he got to his latest destination, and could not recall any events that had taken place during his journey. Through the method of hypnosis, however, Dadas was able to regain some of his memories and recall the happenings of his journeys.[4] At the age of twenty-six, Jean Albert-Dadas was admitted to a Dr. Albert Pitres' ward in the hospital of Saint-André after a long journey, weeping and exhausted. In 1886 in Pitres' ward, Dadas met Phillipe Tissie, a learned medical student and the man who would go on to study his condition and administer his treatment.[7]

Jean Albert-Dadas' condition did not impair his ability to build relationships with the people around him, only his ability to maintain them. Upon returning from another bout of fugue, Dadas fell in love and became engaged to be wed. However, this engagement was called off when Dadas once again vanished on June 18th, 1885, deserting his fiancee for three months before returning to her in September. Dadas' fiancee refused to speak to him again after his desertion.[4] Through a second, quicker courtship, Dadas married a different woman, hoping that betrothal would keep him stationary. Despite his hopes, Dadas would steal money from his new wife and leave for another trip immediately after his wedding.[8] His wife, jaded with wondering where Dadas was, began to seek satisfaction from other men, eventually marrying again before Dadas returned, much to his surprise.[8] Dadas did eventually marry a second time and have a daughter named Marguerite-Gabrielle.[9][8] However, after his wife's death due to tuberculosis, Dadas' daughter had to be adopted as his condition made him unable to be a reliable father for Marguerite. He frequently visited his daughter in between his travels.[9] At the age of fifteen, his daughter would be trafficked into prostitution.[8][9] At this time, Dadas would also pass away.[10]

Early life edit

Jean-Albert Dadas was born to parents Marie Dumeur and Romain Dadas and three siblings; two brothers and a sister.[11] Born to a family of gas workers, Dadas was born to a hypochondriac father predisposed to gambling and squandering money as well as sexual promiscuity.[12] One of his brothers managed a gas factory in the Midi and died of meningitis at the age of thirty-five. The second also suffered from hypochondria and headaches and worked in town, eventually dying in 1892. Dadas' sister was married to another gas worker. Dadas would join this family business at the age of twelve, around where his bouts of dromomania began.[5] Dadas' mother died from pneumonia at age fifty in 1877 and his father died at the age of sixty-one from swelling of the brain in 1881.[12] Dadas sentimentally and devotedly honored his mother after her death.

At the age of eight, Jean-Albert Dadas fell from a tree and injured his head, leading to subsequent uncontrollable vomiting, a concussion, and migraines.[5] It is speculated that this injury to his undeveloped brain is the cause of Dadas' uncontrollable wandering and inability to conceptualize his inherent want to wander in his later years. These symptoms disappeared within the year, but Dadas gained severe nerve pain in the mouth shortly thereafter which was not aided by removal of teeth, hinting at possible neurological damage, though this is debated.[13]

At the age of twelve, upon entering his position at the gas company, Dadas mysteriously disappeared. He was found soon thereafter by his brother helping a traveling umbrella salesman. When confronted, Dadas awoke from a sleep-like, disoriented state and could not recall why he left. This would be the first of countless instances of fugue for Dadas.[5]

Dromomania edit

Dromomania is a historical term coined by Philippe Tissie that refers to a nervous disposition characterized by a compulsive drive to take flight. This condition, also known as "wanderlust" and "fugue" is associated with an uncontrollable psychological urge to wander or travel. The symptoms of this condition may include behavior such as spontaneously departing from one's routine, traveling long distances, changing identities and occupations, and staying abroad for months at a time without returning to one's former identity.[1][14] Dromomaniacs were characterized by mood swings, bouts of extreme depression, and a longing to leave one's current state or dwelling. Those afflicted with this condition abandoned friends, family, jobs, and entire livelihoods for no reason other than pointless travel.[15]

The medical reports of Jean Albert-Dadas' disposition to desertion catalyzed an epidemic of fugue and "mad voyagers" in Bordeaux. This epidemic spread to Paris, France, Italy, and Germany with many medical disquisitions being written about the spike in cases in these areas.[3][16]

Dromomania emerged during the late 19th century and the early 20th century as a new diagnosis from medical research and discussions on nervous dispositions and disorders. The condition was mostly restricted to Europe, as dromomania was not a common occurrence outside of the region.[2] The term dromomania covered a range of individuals, including those with hysterical and epileptic fugues, as well as people who did not fit either label and were considered neurasthenic. It became an umbrella term for impulsive fugue and was associated with the larger concept of degeneracy or vagrancy.

Dadas' travels edit

Jean Albert-Dadas first set out on his countless journeys at the age of twelve while he working as an apprentice to M. L. at a gas equipment manufacturing company in Bordeaux, France. Without notice, Dadas picked up and left town toward Arcachon and began apprenticing with a traveling umbrella salesman before being found by his brother and awoken from his trance-like state. Only a month after his first instance of fugue, Albert once again picked up and traveled to Valence d'Agen after simply hearing about the location from his father and was sent home by a family friend shortly thereafter.[17]

During his employment at the gas company, Albert's employer, M. L. sent the young boy and one of his peers to retrieve coke for the gas company with 100 francs to purchase it. Unexpectedly, Jean Albert-Dadas found himself awaking on a train traveling to Paris and was found sleeping on a bench at the Orleans station in Paris and directed towards the police station to get back home. However, Albert was held in Mazas for two weeks before his information was obtained from his hometown and he was released to return to his family on foot, as they refused to pay the his fare and chose, instead, to pay Albert's employer the 100 francs back. Instead of returning home, however, Albert worked as a house servant to M. Michel B at Lagroue in Marsac for at a pay rate of 50 francs per day. Only after two months did Albert return home with a sum of 50 francs saved up.


Case Study edit

 
An image of Jean Albert-Dadas awake (left) and hypnotized (right)

Albert observed edit

Jean Albert-Dadas entered the Saint-André hospital in Bordeaux on the 17th of January in 1886. A month later, he was transferred to the ward of Albert Pitres, a neurological physician and professor, as he lectured about hypnotism and hysteria. During this time, one of Pitres' students, Philippe Tissie, began to observe Dadas more closely despite there being sixty patients assigned to Pitres' ward.[7] Initially, it was believed that Dadas was suffering from epilepsy before being deemed a hysterical fuguer. Tissie kept track of Dadas through reports that would eventually be turned into a book of dreams published after Dadas' death in 1890. These reports depict Albert as the typical brain damage patient, remarking instances of amnesia, mood swings, and headaches. According to Tissie, Dadas even angrily lashed out at a coworker during an instance of fugue. Despite this, it is debated whether or not Dadas' injury as a child actually had an impact on his condition in his adult life, as his symptoms can align with a number of other conditions and his observers placed high scrutiny on possible brain damage, potentially swaying the case's results.[13] It is not known what the exact cause of Albert's condition was.[18]

Treatment and recollection edit

The method of hypnosis was regarded as an effective method for treating fuguers in the 19th century.[14] Despite this, Jean Albert-Dadas was not treated through hypnosis until months after he admitted himself into Saint-André.[19] Tissie first used hypnosis on Albert in December of 1886, but had already facilitated Albert's recollection of his journeys a great deal before the method was utilized. It is not known exactly when hypnotic treatment began for Albert, as Tissie's timeline of events in earlier and later records do not align.[20] In states of hypnosis, Dadas was made to perform actions that he likely would not have done in his everyday life such as riding a bike with companions and other unorthodox experiments.

Tissie assimilated Albert to multiplicity; the concept of having more than one consciousness, an idea proposed by Eugene Azam, a French surgeon and psychologist. Azam remarked that Albert had a "first" and "second" consciousness. The first being Albert in his normal, everyday "awake" state, and the second being his state of fugue. Azam found that Albert's state of fugue appeared more intelligent. This aligning of Albert's fugue to a case of double consciousness allowed for him to be directly compared with cases of multiplicity.[19]

Broader impact edit

Jean Albert-Dadas' case and medical records caused a spike in cases of dromomania, focusing mainly in Europe in the 1890s, though this epidemic would only last for 25 years after Albert's case.[21][2] This sudden traveling craze began in Bordeaux, France, and soon spread to other European countries such as Germany and Russia. This uptick in cases of dromomania allowed the mysterious condition to be studied more critically and with scrutiny, allowing fugue to become a neurological disorder in its own right. Though fugue and dromomania never made it to the United States or elsewhere, its impact remains prevalent through past medical studies and pop culture and media. The movie entitled "Forrest Gump", adapted from the book of the same name, takes inspiration from and references Jean Albert-Dadas, though not directly stated in the media. Robert Zemeckis, the director of the film, took Jean Albert-Dadas as one of his inspirations and references for the main character. In the tale, Forrest Gump, an also mentally impaired man, lives through events similar to that of Dadas such as enlisting in the military, traveling frequently, and rarely staying stationary for long periods of time. There is a point in Gump's life in which he decides to run for three years, two months, fourteen days, and sixteen hours without stopping and without reason, all while garnering a large crowd of people who take up and follow suit after him, reflecting the growing epidemic of dromomania and fugue in Europe after Dadas' reports were made available to the public.

See also edit

  • Jan E. Goldstein's "Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century" (1989)
  • Ian Dowbiggin's "Inheriting Madness: Professionalization and Psychiatric Knowledge in Nineteenth Century France" (1991)
  • Kenneth White's "Les Affinités extrêmes" (2017)
  • Aminatta Forna's "Ein Lied aus der Vergangenheit" (2012)

References edit

  1. ^ a b Hacking, Ian (1997). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press (published 1998). pp. 7–30. ISBN 9781853434556.
  2. ^ a b c Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. pp. 7–8. ISBN 9781853434556.
  3. ^ a b Toohey, Peter (2012). Boredom: A Lively History (1st ed.). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. pp. 71–72. ISBN 9780300141108.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. pp. 22–24. ISBN 9781853434556.
  5. ^ a b c d e Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. p. 21. ISBN 9781853434556.
  6. ^ a b Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. pp. 21–22. ISBN 9781853434556.
  7. ^ a b Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. p. 14. ISBN 9781853434556.
  8. ^ a b c d Seminara, David (2021). Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed and the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth (1st ed.). New York: Post Hill Press. pp. 166–167. ISBN 9781642938586.
  9. ^ a b c Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. p. 25. ISBN 9781853434556.
  10. ^ Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. p. 112. ISBN 9781853434556.
  11. ^ Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. pp. 19–21. ISBN 9781853434556.
  12. ^ a b Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illness (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. p. 19. ISBN 9781853434556.
  13. ^ a b Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. pp. 106–107. ISBN 9781853434556.
  14. ^ a b Mak, K Y (2000). "The Interesting Phenomena of Dissociative Disorders" (PDF). The Hong Kong Practitioner. 22: 596 – via Google Scholar.
  15. ^ Dianosashvili, Nino (2021). "Where is Io Rushing to? Why and for What? On the Function of οἶστρος in Prometheus Bound". PHASIS. 24: 15–16 – via PHASIS: Greek and Roman Studies.
  16. ^ Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. p. 26–27. ISBN 9781853434556.
  17. ^ Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. pp. 135–148. ISBN 9781853434556.
  18. ^ Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. p. 109. ISBN 9781853434556.
  19. ^ a b Hacking, Ian (1998). Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. p. 26. ISBN 9781853434556.
  20. ^ Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. pp. 108–109. ISBN 9781853434556.
  21. ^ Hacking, Ian (1998). Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1st ed.). University of Virginia Press. pp. 12–13. ISBN 9781853434556.

External links edit

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