Part of MGM's Passing Parade series, the focus is on Dr. Phillippe Pinel, head of an asylum during the time of the French Revolution. Pinel couldn't believe what he found on his first inspection of the facility. Several of the inmates had been there for 30 years or more and lived in horrible conditions, a prison rather than a hospital. He believed that the mentally could be cured and within two years of over a hundred inmates were released. His work was not popular and he was beaten on the street only to be rescued by one of the inmates he had released years before.