Jean-Dominque Bauby

At the age of forty-three, on 8 December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, a well-known Parisian, suffered a massive stroke which rendered his brain stem inactive. When he woke up twenty days later, he found he was mute and almost entirely paralysed; he could only move his head a little, grunt and blink his left eyelid. This rare condition is called locked-in syndrome.

Despite his condition, he authored the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2002) by blinking when the correct letter was reached by a person slowly reciting the alphabet over and over again. Bauby died three days after the French publication of his book in 1997.