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Desperate remedies: a Gothic tale of madness and modern medicine*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Andrew Scull*
Affiliation:
Sociology Department, University of California, San Diego, California, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Professor A. Scull, Sociology Department, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA

Synopsis

The theory that many diseases were produced by focal infection or chronic sepsis enjoyed a brief vogue in general medicine in the first quarter of the twentieth century. This paper explores its practical applications in psychiatry, which extended well into the 1930s. The analysis focuses particularly closely on the activities of Henry A. Cotton at the Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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Footnotes

*

The 14th Annual Squibb lecture in the History of Psychiatry, delivered at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, July 1986.

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