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. At the massive institution of the Salptri¨re Hospital there are housed hundreds of female patients classified as €˜hysterics€.

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 who intrigues all who have contact with her through the strangeness of her being and the mystery of her past. It is not only the hospital doctors who will be involved in Madeleine€s story, but also a young Symbolist artist, a catholic priest, and most dangerously, those practising the darkest aspects of the occult.