Infectious insanities, surgical solutions: Bayard Taylor Holmes, dementia praecox and laboratory science in early 20th-century America. Part 1.
After his 17-year-old son suddenly developed a chronic psychotic illness in 1905, Bayard Taylor Holmes (1852-1924), a Chicago physician and surgeon with no psychiatric training, conducted both library and laboratory research on dementia praecox, as described in Part 1 of this two-part study. By late 1915 he believed he had found support for a focal infection theory of its aetiology--an ergot-like toxaemia caused by faecal stasis in the caecum. Holmes was also the editor of what is believed to be the first medical journal named after a psychiatric disorder: Dementia Praecox Studies. Part 2 will describe Holmes' adoption of a rational therapy (using it first on his son, who died), and his founding of a Psychiatric Research Laboratory.
Noll
Richard
R
Psychology Department, DeSales University, Center Valley, PA 18034-9568, USA. Richard.Noll@desales.edu
D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000266:history*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000266:history*; D014481:United States