Early Psychiatry

Charles Barber ( Comfortably Numb ) writes, “In 1916, Dr. Henry Cotton of Trenton State Hospital, believing that germs from tooth decay led to insanity, removed patients’ teeth and other body parts, such as the bowels, which he thought might by the causes of their madness. In so doing, he killed almost half of his patients – more than one hundred people. Cotton’s practices were covered up by the hospital board and the leading figure in American psychiatry of the day, Adolf Meyer, and Cotton was also allowed to continue practicing at the hospital for almost another twenty years. At his eulogy in 1933, Meyer lauded Cotton’s ‘extraordinary record of achievement.”