Muristek
The chequered history of psychiatry over the last 200 years reveals much pain and some progress
There may not have been any good times to have been mentally ill in the last 200 years, but there have been some spectacularly bad ones. Having all your teeth pulled out to end your “madness” might seem as extreme as it gets, but if you were unfortunate enough to be under the care of Dr Henry Cotton in the early decades of the 20th century, there was a real risk that your intestines might follow. If you were female your cervix was a potential victim, too. Unsurprisingly, survival was not guaranteed, no one got better, and quality of life for those who lived was severely curtailed.
Fast forward a few years, past the insulin-induced coma treatment and the frequent administration of electric shock therapy (several times a day), and you might also want to avoid Dr Walter Freeman, who wielded a modified ice-pick to lobotomise up to 20 patients in one session. Hardly surprising, perhaps, that those who could afford it turned to psychoanalysis – often painful itself, but in a very different way.
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