Editorials Psychiatry and its historians This issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of

Medicine contains four papers on historical aspects of psychiatry in the 19th century, presented at a meeting of the Section of Psychiatry in June 1987. Each of them deals authoritatively with a different topic: a prominent alienist1, the insanity defence2, criminal lunatics3, and puerperal psychosis4. It is noteworthy, however, that while all ofthem are by experts in their various fields- sociology, history of science, social history, and medical history respectively- only one author has a medical background and none is a psychiatrist. As a group they illustrate well Bynum's observation that 'Until relatively recently the history of psychiatry continued to be written primarily by practising psychiatrists and reflected to a large extent the professional preoccupations of its authors... Increasingly, however, the history of psychiatry has not been the exclusive domain of the psychiatrist, as social, intellectual and legal historians, sociologists, criminologists, anthropologists, philosophers and historians of medicine, among others, have examined many cultural and historical aspects of mental disorders'5. This trend has become increasingly evident over the past twenty years. In 1970, acknowledging the need for something broader than the ideological perspective he had adopted in his compendious text, A Short History of Psychiatry6, Erwin Ackerknecht drew attention to the newly awakened interest of professional historians in the field of psychological medicine7. Since then the trickle has become a flood and severil impressive volumes have appeared: as a sample to illustrate their range there may be listed Michael MacDonald's Mystical Bedlam5