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In his 1895 textbook, Mental Physiology, Bethlem Royal Hospital physician Theo Hyslop acknowledged the assistance of three fellow hospital residents. One was a junior colleague. The other two were both patients: Walter Abraham Haigh and Henry Francis Harding. Haigh was also thanked in former superintendent George Savage’s book Insanity and Allied Neuroses (1884). In neither instance were the patients identified as such. This begs the question: what role did Haigh and Harding play in asylum theory and practice? And how did these two men interpret their experiences, both within and outside the asylum? By focusing on Haigh and Harding’s unusual status, this paper argues that the notion of nineteenth-century ‘asylum patient’ needs to be investigated by paying close attention to specific national and institutional circumstances. Exploring Haigh and Harding’s active engagement with their physicians provides insight into this lesser-known aspect of psychiatry’s history. Their experience suggests that, in some instances, representations of madness at that period were the product of a two-way process of negotiation between alienist and patient. Patients, in other words, were not always mere victims of ‘psychiatric power’; they participated in the construction and circulation of medical notions by serving as active intermediaries between medical and lay perceptions of madness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of self-mutilation, self-harm, and self-inflicted injury in late nineteenth century Great Britain. It particularly concentrates on the "minor" self-mutilations of face-picking and hair-plucking, also called trichotillomania. The author reflects on neurological and social explanations and comments on considerations of gender, sexuality, and heredity. She also notes perceived connections between self-mutilation, insanity, self-obsession, and self-control. Several patients' cases are examined, including that of stone mason Isaac Brooks.

A correction to the article that reviewed the book "Swallow: Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration and the Curious Doctor who Extracted Them," by Mary Cappello that was published in volume 56, issue 1 is presented.