Before the era of machine ciphers, a codebreaker could count on success at the price of reaching the limit of his mental strength. In many cases, cryptologists unknowingly crossed this border, overpaying triumph over the code with a nervous breakdown. The most famous were the adventures of Georges Painvin after breaking the German ADFGVX cipher in April 1918 (which allowed to fight off the German offensive of last chance) and William Friedman after breaking the cipher of the Japanese Purple machine in 1940 (which did not prevent the tragedy of Pearl Harbor). In both cases, a few months’ rest allowed the codebreakers to recover; the story is silent about the incidents in which this proved impossible.