Wolstan Dixie
Junior Acolyte
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2018
- Messages
- 48
I know someone who was committed to a large County Mental Hospital in Britain in 1957. He say the inmates greatest fear was NOT Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT) but having all their teeth forcibly extracted. The Director, Dr Sykes, believed he could cure insanity by extracting all your teeth - and he instigated a large programme to de-teeth all the inmates. Fortunately he retired just before my informant arrived, so he escaped this fate, but practically all the inmates he met had no teeth.
Was this just an aberrant crank idea by an autocratic psychiatrist, or was it an accepted psychiatric theory?
Was this just an aberrant crank idea by an autocratic psychiatrist, or was it an accepted psychiatric theory?