[in 1783]       A young , twenty-four years old man, endowed with a vivid imagination, came to Paris to pursue his studies,  believing himself  destined by nature to play the most brillant role at the bar. Very intent on developing his mind, he worked continually, secluded himself, and rigidly followed a Pythagorean regimen. Some months later, he suffered from violent headaches, frequent nosebleeds, spasmodic chest constriction, vague intestinal pains, flatulence, and emotional hypersensitivity. Sometimes he approached me beaming with joy, and said that he could not express the extraordinary bliss that he felt. At other times I found him plunged into the horrors of  despair, and he pleaded with me to put an end to his suffering. The characteristics of  profound hypochondria were easy to recognize. I warned him of the approaching danger. I begged him to change his way of life; but he  stubbornly pursued his plan. The nervous symptoms of his head, chest and bowels worsened. He alternated more frequently between extreme despondency and convulsive joy. He experienced terrors  and inexpressible anguish, especially at night,. He sometimes came to find me, disolving in tears, and begging me rescue him from the arms of death. I took him  to the country, where walking and talking together seemed to give him new life.  On  returning to his room, however, his perplexity and terror resumed. His desolation and despair grew with the confusion of his ideas, the impossibility of devoting himself any longer to study, and the realization  that his deluded expectations of celebrity and glory were evaporating.  Complete madness soon followed. One day he went to a performance to distract himself. They were playing "Philosphe sans le savoir." He was immediately assailed by the darkest suspicions. He was convinced that they were ridiculing him. The next morning he reproached me bitterly, accusing me of having furnished material for the play, of having betrayed the the rights of friendship and of having exposed him to public derision. His delusions knew no bounds. While out walking he believed that he saw actors disguised as monks and priests studying his gestures and reading his mind. In the dark of night he believed himself attacked, sometimes by spys, sometimes by theives and assassins. Once he  alarmed the whole neighborhood by suddenly opening his window and crying out that they were trying to kill him. One of his relatives was determined to make him submit to the treatment of mania used at  the former Hotel-Dieu. He sent him, after twenty days, with a companion  to a small city near the pyrenees. Weakened mentally and physically, still alternating between spells of the most extravagant delusions and attacks of profound melancholy, he was condemned  to total isolation at his family's home. Bored, disgusted with life, refusing  food, hostile toward those who came near him, he managed to slip past his guard, with nothing on but his shirt, and flee into a nearby woods, where he got lost and died of weakness and starvation. Two days later he was found dead, with a copy of Plato's famous book on the imortality of the soul in his hand [Pinel, 1801, 54, trans. E. Brown].
 

From this experience Pinel drew conclusions about the advantages of managing the insane.