Dupont was inspired to write the book after encountering the Nicole Millet case (1725), in which a man was acquitted of killing his wife when the court ruled that she had been killed by SHC. Nicole Millet had supposedly been found burnt to death in an unburnt chair, and a young surgeon named Nicholas le Cat managed to convince the court that her death had been caused by SHC. Jonas Dupont's book brought SHC from being just a dark folkloric rumor into light of popular public imagination.