That psychopathological understanding and creativity are enhanced by knowledge of history was well understood by nineteenth century alienists. Calmeil, Morel, Trélat, Semelaigne, Kirshoff, Winslow, Ireland, Mercier, Bucknill and Tuke wrote full-blown historical pieces; Pinel, Haslam, Heinroth, Guislain, Esquirol, Feuchsterleben, Prichard, Connolly, Griesinger, Lucas, Falret and Dagonet included historical chapters in their clinical textbooks.

Some, like Haslam, even emphasized historical semantics: ‘Mad is therefore not a complex idea, as has been supposed, but a complex term for all the forms and varieties of this disease. Our language has been enriched with other terms expressive of this affection … ’ / Inspired by eighteenth century German ‘historicism’, others saw their role as that of rescuing lost insights from an obscure (and mythical) psychiatric past. Heinroth, for example, subscribed to a cyclical, Vico-inspired, conception according to which history consisted of the recurrence of few great themes: ‘the development of mental forces in humanity is accompanied by an ever advancing, ever more degraded degeneration of these forces’. For him, psychiatry followed a ‘developmental’ path: ‘a study of the kind and degree of recognition and treatment of mental disturbances observed in early antiquity shows that these bear a striking imprint of the childhood of the human spirit’.

Pinel made use of a more ‘presentistic’ approach (history was a preparation for what was happening now). Influenced by the optimistic historiography of the French revolution, he regarded the past of psychiatry as a museum of failed endeavours.