Jules Côtard (1840–1889) presented a report entitled, ‘Du délire hypochondriaque dans une forme grave de la mélancoli anxieuse’, in he described a 43-year-old female patient on 28 June 1880 at a meeting of the Societé Médico-Psychologique. The woman believed that she had ‘no brain, nerves, chest, or entrails, and was just skin and bone … that neither God or the devil existed … and that she was eternal and would live forever’ (Berrios & Luque, 1995, p. 218). In addition, she said that she did not need food and asked to be burnt alive. She had made various suicide attempts. Côtard initially diagnosed lypémanie and formed the view that this was a new type of lypémanie consisting of anxious melancholia, ideas of damnation or possession, suicidal behaviour, insensitivity to pain, delusions of non-existence and delusions of immortality.