“There is no fiction in the book: all the persons mentioned in it existed and, for the most part, continue to exist. Many of them haven’t even had their names changed.” The author spoke in detail about the mental illnesses of his patients and various methods of treating them. The famous psychiatrist Professor Andrei Sergeevich Chistovich, headed the largest departments of psychiatry in the Soviet Union, including the department of the Military Medical Academy and the psychiatry clinic of the Institute of Physiology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. A brilliant lecturer, an original scientist who made a significant contribution to the doctrine of infectious psychoses and their chronic forms. He was actively interested in the problem of sleep and dreams.