PUSHBUTTON PSYCHIATRY

PUSHBUTTON PSYCHIATRY
Author: Timothy W Kneeland
Publisher: Left Coast Press
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1611325927

This volume uncovers the roots of electroshock in America, an outgrowth of western patriarchal medicine with primarily female patients. The authors trace the history of electroshock in the United States in three historic stages: from an enthusiastic reception in 1940, to a period of crisis in the 1960s, to its resurgence after 1980. Early American experiments with electrical medicine are also examined, while the development of electroshock in America is considered through the lens of social, political, and economic factors. The revival of electroshock in recent decades is found to be a product of growing materialism in American psychiatry and the political and economic realities of managed medical care. The new material in the Updated Paperback Edition describes the resurgence of electroshock in the private psychiatric sector as a treatment of choice for depression.

The Making of Rehabilitation

The Making of Rehabilitation
Author: Glenn Gritzer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 1989-04-20
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0520066049

Focusing on the history of one medical field—rehabilitation medicine—this book provides the first systematic analysis of the underlying forces that shape medical specialization, challenging traditional explanations of occupational specialization.

The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford

The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford
Author: Robert W. P. Cutler
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804747936

Jane Stanford, the co-founder of Stanford University, died in Honolulu in 1905, shortly after surviving strychnine poisoning in San Francisco. The inquest testimony of the physicians who attended her death in Hawaii led to a coroner’s jury verdict of murder—by strychnine poisoning. Stanford University President David Starr Jordan promptly issued a press release claiming that Mrs. Stanford had died of heart disease, a claim that he supported by challenging the skills and judgment of the Honolulu physicians and toxicologist. Jordan’s diagnosis was largely accepted and promulgated in many subsequent historical accounts. In this book, the author reviews the medical reports in detail to refute Dr. Jordan’s claim and to show that Mrs. Stanford indeed died of strychnine poisoning. His research reveals that the professionals who were denounced by Dr. Jordan enjoyed honorable and distinguished careers. He concludes that Dr. Jordan went to great lengths, over a period of nearly two decades, to cover up the real circumstances of Mrs. Stanford’s death.