ABSTRACT
The 300-year-old history of psychiatry has been a colourful and dramatic affair, often embellished with grandiose, self-serving ambition and not a little care and compassion. Sadly, compassion and carefulness do not win Nobel prizes and have usually been displaced in favour of the latest ‘ground-breaking discovery’. We need to remember that we remain steeped in history, which is being written as we speak. The names of the characters may change but the perennial story remains fairly constant. Person falls down in the stream of life. Who will pick him or her up? Why should they bother?
