The current Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital takes up 33 hectors (81.5 acres) of the 13th arrondissement behind the Gare d’Austerlitz. Since 1656, the hospital has had a long and sometimes disturbing history of dealing with women who were sent there by family, courts or society because they were seen as different. The Mad Women’s Ball, by French author Victoria Mas, highlights this issue when, in 1885, the father of 19-year-old Eugénie decides that her connections with spirits of the dead (along with her intelligence) are inappropriate for his bourgeoise Parisian family’s status and sends her to the Hysteria Ward at Salpêtrière. The historical thriller illustrates what happens to the women in Salpêtrière who are considered inconvenient to society while being a story of fighting for women’s strength, independent thought, and liberation. It also takes a tough look at family and its roles defined by society and love. At the time, the Salpêtrière was a celebrated neuropsychiatric teaching hospital led by controversial Jean-Martin Charcot who led the way for modern clinical neurology and dealing with hysteria. For years, Eugénie had connected with spirits, including her dead grandfather whose spirit gives her loving advice. She keeps her visions to herself as seeing dead people is considered a sign of madness, but then she reads The Spirits’ Book by Allan Kardec. The book helps her define herself as it claims souls survive the death of the body and guide and watch over mankind. Just as her grandfather guides and watches over her. “A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière” by Pierre Aristide André Brouillet. This painting shows Charcot demonstrating hypnosis on a “hysterical” patient, “Blanche”, who is supported by Dr. Joseph Babiński (rear). Public domain/ Wikimedia commons She gets into trouble when her grandfather’s spirit tells her where to find a long lost pendant in front of her grandmother. Despite the joy of finding the pendant, the grandmother tells Eugénie’s father about the spirit visit and he has Eugènie committed to the Salpêtrière. Her loving brother is heartbroken but he can’t go against their dad or he too will lose everything. Eugènie enters Salpêtrière a few weeks before the popular annual soiree of the title. The “mad women” will be put on display at the ball as the people of Paris sip wine and watch the actions of Charcot who uses the women as circus performers to illustrate his hysteria theories. In particular, he will highlight a young woman named Louise (modeled after his real patient Louise Augustine Gleizes) to perform seizures displayed in a variety of contortions once he hypnotizes her. Charcot uses hypnotism to treat hysteria and other abnormal mental conditions. All materials from Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière (Jean Martin Charcot, 1878). Public domain