Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine
Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine
复制标题
疯人院：狂妄自大与现代医学的悲剧故事
DOI：
10.5860/choice.43-4064
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发表时间：
2005
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. Scull
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Scull
《疯人院》揭示了一个长期被压抑的医疗丑闻，其残酷性令人震惊，其影响令人清醒。它展示了一位世纪早期的美国精神病学家是如何相信精神疾病是一种纯粹的生物学现象，是慢性感染毒害大脑的产物。新泽西特伦顿州立医院的院长亨利·科顿确信他已经发现了精神病的唯一来源，他发起了一场无情的运动，以“消除脓液感染的危险”。牙齿被拔掉，扁桃体被切除，胃、脾、结肠、子宫都被牺牲在对“局灶性脓毒症”的非凡攻击中。许多病人没有在科顿的手术中幸存下来，还有数千人被肢解和致残。科顿的工作是有争议的，但他的同事没有质疑他的实验做法。阿道夫·迈耶仍然被认为是20世纪上半叶最伟大的美国精神病学家，他压制了对科顿的批评。英国医学机构将他奉为“新李斯特”，随后的历史学家和精神病学家忽略了质疑他们最喜欢的科学和人道主义进步叙述的事件。通过大量的文献和访谈，他以生动的细节重建了现代精神病学中一个噩梦般的、警示性的篇章，当时专业人士未能自我监督。一个调查性报道的巡回演出和一个关于自大狂、垃圾科学和任人唯亲与希波克拉底誓言的挑衅性案例研究。这也是一部快节奏的医学惊悚片。西尔维娅·纳萨尔，<美丽心灵>的作者"我读过的最令人印象深刻的精神病学史.威廉·F.拜纳姆，惠康医学史中心。
Madhouse reveals a 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 a purely biological phenomenon, 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, stomachs, spleens, colons, uteruses were all sacrificed in an extraordinary 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. Adolf Meyer, still regarded as the greatest American psychiatrist of the first half of the twentieth century, suppressed criticism of Cotton. The British medical establishment lionized him as 'a new Lister', and subsequent historians and psychiatrists have ignored events that questioned their favourite 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. 'a tour de force of investigative reporting and a provocative case study of megalomania, junk science and cronyism vs. the Hippocratic Oath. It's also a fast-paced medical thriller.' Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind 'The most impressive piece of narrative psychiatric history I have ever read.' William F. Bynum, Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine.