s used to treat cases of hysteria, now called ôshell shock,ö in men. Many illnesses, however, seemed unaffected by this sort of cognitive therapy, as it is now called, and on them physical approaches, many of which now appear atrociously crude, even barbaric, were tried, especially within the asylums.
One notorious example of this physical approach was that of Henry Cotton at the Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey. Cotton had hypothesized that insanity was caused by bacterial infections or their toxins affecting the brain. Accordingly, he began in 1916 to extract every source of infection in his mental patientsÆ bodies that he could think of: teeth, tonsils, and even part of the colon. Thousands of patients were involuntarily subjected to such surgery; of those given colectomies, 43 percent died. When CottonÆs record was finally examined by skeptical physicians in 1924, they discovered that the rates of recovery he had been claiming were falsified, among his other sins. Unfortunately, he was allowed to continue on at the hospital, until he died in 193
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