The excellent blog Mind Hacks recently noted that the British Journal of Psychiatry runs a regular column about the nature of the discipline 100 years earlier. The column, researched and written by Henry Rollin, provides a fascinating, and occasionally gruesome glimpse into the past. For instance, there are items on the unconscious mind, hypnosis, hysteria, mental “dissociation,” masturbation, “auto-accusation” (falsely confessing to a crime), “pyromania in puberty”, and a number of “idiots”, “imbeciles,” and the “feeble-minded”.

Best of all, BJP has made the columns freely available on their website.