Henry Andrews Cotton, 1876-1933
Thanks to Cathleen, my blog is once again worth reading.
- Cotton believed that mental illnesses were the result of chronic infections in areas such as teeth and tonsils (this was based on the observation that mentally ill patients would offer have a high fever and hallucinate).
- So how do you cure infections like that pre-antibiotics? As the medical director of the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton from 1907-1930, he implemented this theory by removing teeth, sinuses, tonsils. If the patient was still mentally ill after this, then more “infected” organs would be removed, such at stomachs (which I don’t understand how you survive without a stomach), colons, uterus, and testicles.
- Even though Cotton reported an extremely high success rate (85%), most patients died after the procedure from (you guessed it) postoperative infection.
- In 1925, hearings in the New Jersey State Senate began over Cotton’s practices, however, numerous physicians and surgeons testified that New Jersey State Hospital was one of the most progressive institutions for the mentally ill. Cotton retired in 1930 but his medical procedures were continued until the 1950s.
[Note: There’s a golfer that bears the name Henry Cotton, so that is a picture of him up there, not Henry Cotton the doctor.]
