TIL, and am reminded of W. C. Minor
(cut off his penis as a kind of self-punishment for sex addiction, with a side of paranoid scizophrenia)
I actually read a really interesting book about this guy, another guy, and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. It's called 'The Professor and the Madman': amazon link
A quick Google search tells me it's also called 'The Surgeon of Crowthorne', and that there is now a movie based off it.
>tiny amount of absurdly dedicated people.
Reminds me of the story of the first OED. One man contributed an insane amount of work on hundreds of entries, it turns out from an insane asylum: https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Madman-Insanity-English-Dictionary-ebook/dp/B000FCKM7E
If you haven't read it, The Professor and the Madman is about this. It's a really good (and relatively quick) read.