He Saw a Light So Beautiful He Knew It Was Heaven | Paris Pharmacist NDE

What happens when you die? In 1740, a Paris pharmacist answered that question from the very threshold of death, and his answer became the oldest medical record of a near-death experience in history.

The pharmacist collapsed and lay motionless, unresponsive to everything around him, while the physicians and staff who attended him feared he would not survive. By every measure available in 1740, he was at death's door. When he finally opened his eyes and recovered, he told his physician, Pierre-Jean du Monchaux, what he had experienced while he was gone.

This episode tells his story from du Monchaux's 1766 book Anecdotes de medecine. The pharmacist reported being surrounded by a light so bright, so pure, and so beautiful that he was certain he was in heaven. The light filled him with a peace and joy he had never known before, and he said he had never had a more pleasant moment in his entire life. He recovered with an unshakable conviction that death was not the end, and he spoke of the light for the rest of his days.

Du Monchaux recorded the account and, as a man of science, offered an explanation: he suggested that an excess of blood flow to the brain during the illness might have produced the mystical feelings. But his attempt at explanation only underscored the importance of what he had witnessed. For the first time in history, a physician had formally recorded a dying patient's vision of the afterlife in the medical literature. Modern researchers now recognize the case as the earliest documented near-death experience, containing the same elements reported by millions today: a brilliant light, profound peace, and the loss of the fear of death. Listen to the oldest NDE on record, the pharmacist who saw heaven's light in 1740.