Salomon de Caus incarcerated in the mental asylum of Bicetre. Lithograph from 1845 by Jacques Joseph Lecurieuxafter Lafosse. Salomon de Caus (1576 - 1626) was a French Huguenot engineer, once (falsely) credited with the development of the steam engine. He worked as an hydraulic engineer and architect under Louis XIII. Caus also designed gardens in England, that of Somerset House among them. Being a Huguenot, Caus spent his life moving across Europe to escape persecution. In its history, Bicetre Hospital was used successively and simultaneously as an orphanage, a prison, a lunatic asylum, and a hospital. Its most notorious guest was the Marquis de Sade. Its superintendent, Philippe Pinel, is credited as being the first to introduce humane methods into the treatment of the mentally ill, in 1793.