Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine"Reads as much like a novel as it does a work of medical scholarship."--Patrick McGrath, New York Times Book Review Madhouse revealsa long-suppressed medical scandal, shocking in its brutality and sobering in its implications. It shows how a leading American psychiatrist of the early twentieth century came to believe that mental illnesses were the product of chronic infections that poisoned the brain. Convinced that he had uncovered the single source of psychosis, Henry Cotton, superintendent of the Trenton State Hospital, New Jersey, launched a ruthless campaign to "eliminate the perils of pus infection." Teeth were pulled, tonsils excised, and stomachs, spleens, colons, and uteruses were all sacrificed in the assault on "focal sepsis." Many patients did not survive Cotton's surgeries; thousands more were left mangled and maimed. Cotton's work was controversial, yet none of his colleagues questioned his experimental practices. Subsequent historians and psychiatrists too have ignored the events that cast doubt on their favorite narratives of scientific and humanitarian progress. In a remarkable feat of historical detective work, Andrew Scull exposes the full, frightening story of madness among the mad-doctors. Drawing on a wealth of documents and interviews, he reconstructs in vivid detail a nightmarish, cautionary chapter in modern psychiatry when professionals failed to police themselves. |
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abdominal surgery Adolf Meyer alienists appeared Association asylum Baltimore board of managers British CAJH Series XV cervix Chronic Sepsis claims clinical colectomies colon committee condition Cotton to Meyer criticism cure death Defective Delinquent Delinquent and Insane dementia praecox etiology extracted fact focal infection focal sepsis Freeman Graves Greenacre to Meyer Greenacre's Henry Cotton Hospital Annual Report hospital's Ibid insisted institution interventions intestinal Jersey John Harvey Kellogg July June Kirby Kopeloff laboratory later lobotomy madness medicine ment Mental Diseases mental disorder mental hospital mental illness metrazol Meyer Papers Meyer to Cotton Meyer to Raycroft months mortality noted once operation pathology patients percent Phyllis Greenacre physical physician Princeton profession professional psychiatry psychosis recovered recovery removal Richter schizophrenia seemed So-Called Functional staff superintendent surgical syphilis therapeutic therapy tion tonsillectomies tonsils toxemia treated treatment Trenton State Hospital TSH Archives University Walter Freeman wards Watson York