Set in Paris during the French Revolution, it tells the story of Philippe Pinel and his efforts in pointing out that the mentally ill should not be treated as animals.
A few hours later, in the dark caves below La Bicetre, an iron door opened, letting the sunlight blind the eyes of those below who lived in perpetual night.
Thus, in the autumn of 1793, did a humble and modest man discovered that love and kindness are the two greatest medicines known to science, and Dr. Pinel lay down some famous rules.
And in the two-year period that followed the arrival of Pinel, more than a hundred suffering souls went up that stairway from darkness into the outer world of the light, and sky and the stars.
For by one of the great coincidences of history, the man who had saved his life was Hector Chevigny (early officer of the Royal Navy, then mindless, no longer knowing the meaning of the fleur-de-lis branded on his hand), whose mind had been cured by the kindness of Philippe Pinel.