In 1489, Sprenger and Kraemer described a priest with motor and vocal tics in the Malleus Maleficarum (Witch's Hammer). The Prince de Conde Β΄from the 17th century French court stuffed objects in his mouth to suppress involuntary noises. Samuel Johnson's grunts and barks, facial grimaces, and repetitive body twitches strongly suggest that he also suffered with Gilles de la Tourette syndrome. The celebrated French physician, Itard (1825) offered the first full medical description of tic disorders, but the condition gained wider recognition and became associated with neurology only after the celebrated J-M Charcot studied tic patients. Although the major descriptive treatise on tics was authored by Charcot's student, Gilles de la Tourette (1885), the work bears the clear mark of Charcot himself.
The modern definition of Gilles de la Tourette syndrome incorporates all the original diagnostic criteria proposed by Charcot and Gilles de la Tourette: childhood onset, motor and vocal tics, natural waxing and waning, and chronicity. Life-long duration was originally part of the clinical definition. Behavioral aberrations, including obsessions, compulsions, inattentiveness, and hyperactivity were appreciated as "mental tics" by the early investigators.