Psychiatry is the medical field that deals with mental illness. A womanwho finds herself depressed and anxious will seek help from a psychiatrist.A young man who hears voices when no one is present, speaks incoherentlyon occasion and declines all social invitations may likewise go to a psychia-trist, or be taken to one by his mother. The psychiatrist will interview theperson, order some basic medical tests, and perhaps review a brain scan.Once the psychiatrist has diagnosed a specific disorder, treatment begins.Most patients are told to take a drug targeting some specific area of thebrain or some specific neural pathway. New drugs are constantly being de-veloped, in many cases by psychiatrist-scientists with expertise in genetics,neuroscience and related biomedical fields. This is modern psychiatry. Itdeveloped gradually, beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century.Everyone is familiar with the great medical discoveries of the nineteenthcentury – antiseptic surgery, x-rays, vaccines, general anesthetics. Psychi-atry had no such discoveries, at least none in the usual sense of the word.Nineteenth century psychiatry saw advances, but few came from the labora-tory. Instead, the history of psychiatry in the nineteenth century is mostlythe history of ideas and the men (only men) who came up with them. Bypromoting the idea that insanity is a disease, not a moral punishment or asocial deviance, these men lessened stigma and improved patient care. Bydemonstrating that madness is not unitary, but rather a diverse group ofseparate illnesses, they instituted major changes in psychiatric diagnosis.And, with the idea of bringing science into psychiatry, they broke groundfor the molecular, genetic and neurobiological findings that now offer realhope for better treatments.