The Strange Case of Madeleine Seguin

It is Paris in the 1880s and the century is in its final throes as it moves through the cultural period of decadence and towards the fin de si cle. New scientific ideas are countered by a resurgent interest in the practice of magic, while in the arts the "Symbolists" are exploring the strangeness of dream and the imagination. At the massive institution of the Salp tri re Hospital, there are hundreds of female patients suffering from the curious malady of "hysteria." Many of these are treated by hypnosis under the regime of the celebrated and charismatic Professor J-M Charcot. This is the history of one such patient, Madeleine Seguin, a young woman whose past is a mystery and who evokes a fascination and possessiveness in those who come close to her. It is not only the hospital doctors who will be involved in Madeleine's story, but also a young Symbolist artist, a catholic priest, a powerful aristocrat, and most dangerously, those practising the darkest aspects of the occult.