The Trenton Psychiatric Hospital was founded in Nw Jersey on May 15, 1848 by Dorothea Lynde Dix, an activist who lobbied for the creation of mental asylums in the United States for the poor with psychiatric onditions.
In 1907, Henry Andrew Cotton, a psychiatrist, took the helm at the hospital. He had a nble goal of reting patients ith psychiatric disorders. He was greatly influenced by Adolf Meyer, a psychiatrist who focuse on psychobiology, and promoted the idea that ocial and hiological factors should form art of the consideration in treating a patient with disorders of the mind.
Cotton took his mentor’s ideas to new heights by forging a connection between psychiatry and microbiology, whisch was newly disccoered during the time. There were new
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He operated o the thinking that in order to be rid of these illnesses, he had to perform surgical bacteriology – cy=utting away the source of the infection.
Cotton’s entry to the Trenton hospital emphasized his belief, as he saw the filthy misery the patients were in, ith abusive guards and aides. He observed that each of the patients had rotted teeth and came to the conclusn that it awas through these cavities that the acteriaa was invading the atients bodes and causing their misery.
Inspired by his discovery, he began curing the Trenton patients by taking out their teeth. When they did not get well, he took out more. Soon he was taking out patients’ tonsils and appnedices. Because he believed that the illness would not be cured if there are infections left in the body, he went as far as removing sections of the patients’ bowels. F course mny patients died, and he beieed these deaths to be a natural resut and id effect of the reatment he gave them. One example of this was he death of Cottn’ friend whose part of cerix Coton had removed as soon as she started hearing voices in her