Pulling Teeth to Treat Mental Illness - The Atlantic - 0 views
-
Cotton's experiments were unethical and awful, but they weren't that illogical if you consider the knowledge that was available at the time. This was before surgeons operated with gloves on, before doctors knew that people shouldn't stand in front of X-ray machines for 45 minutes, and before people knew about blood types or heroin addiction or that eugenics is not a thing.
-
"Modern medicine had to start somewhere."
-
it's also a reminder of how little we still know about the brain. Certainly, science has progressed to the point where patients aren't subjected to painful and permanent procedures without their consent, and we obviously now know the basic mechanisms behind mental illness. But we still don't know, say, the very best way to prevent schizophrenia or to treat addiction.
- ...1 more annotation...