The Case of Arise Evans:

There is now a growing body of agreement on the common interests shared by the discipline of history with the study of human psychology, normal and abnormal. The links with aberrant conduct and motivation are perhaps the most apparent, and much information about the grosser forms of morbid behaviour in earlier epochs has come from the work of those medical historians who have concerned themselves with the development of psychiatry. Most of their work has understandably been focused on the theories and practices of earlier observers, not all physicians, confronted with the recognized mental illnesses of their day. There has also been a long-standing interest in the ‘pathographic’ study of particular individuals or types of individual, though a distinction may be drawn here between the earlier, exploratory studies in this field ¹ and the more speculative interpretations favoured by some modern ‘psycho-historians’. ²