Providentia

The Mercury Mavens

George Washington had the finest medical care available. Unfortunately, given the primitive medicine of the era, that wasn't nearly enough to save him. While it is probably unlikely that he would have survived his final illness, the aggressive treatment that the great statesman received certainly didn't help. His doctors blistered his skin (to draw off "humours"), gave him frequent bleedings (Martha Washington had objected to the bleedings but her husband overrode her), and applied poultices of wheat bran. They also purged him with mercurous chloride to empty his bowels. After growing weaker and finally asking his doctors to leave him alone, George Washington died on December 14, 1799 at the age of 67. The exact nature of his final illness remains unclear but modern historians believe it may have been diphtheria or strep throat. The medical care that he received almost certainly played a role as well (not that he would be the last U.S. president to be killed by well-intentioned doctors).

Mercury, a.k.a. quicksilver or hydrargium, has always fascinated philosophers, chemists, and healers alike. Its silvery appearance, tendency to stay liquid at room temperature, and chemical properties made it a natural ingredient for numerous remedies. Records show that it was used in medicine as early as the second century AD when the Chinese philosopher Pao Pu Tzu recommended mixing pills combining cinnabar (mineralized mercury sulphide) and honey to make patients immortal (the absence of immortals these days would suggest that this hopeful concoction didn't work). The great Greek healer, Hippocrates swore to mercury's medical value and it was also used in traditional remedies for diseases such as smallpox and syphilis.

Thomas Dover (1660-1742) wrote that "to take an ounce of quicksilver every morning is the most beneficial thing in the world".  Mercury was the treatment of choice for syphilis (despite the fact that it did nothing to prevent the onset of dementia or death) but was most widely used in the form of mercurous chloride (better known as calomel). For centuries, the calomel "blue pills" were dispensed by physicians to children and adults as an all-purpose diuretic and laxative. Benjamin Rush, the 18th century dean of American medicine, marketed a personal concoction that he often prescribed for his patents. His "bilious pills" were made up of mercury and jalap (a popular purgative) and Rush swore by their effectiveness (although contemporary critics noted the increased mortality rate in his patients). A journalist of the time referred to Rush's work as "one of those great discoveries which have contributed to the depopulation of the earth".

The effect of mercury-based remedies on patients was certainly noted by physicians and medical horror stories became common. In one medical text published in 1835, several case histories of mercury poisoning were reported: "a boy, about eleven years old, had a sore on once cheek, occasioned by a dentist extracting a tooth; a physician was consulted, who immediately prescribed a course of mercury. In a short time, ulcerations in the throat appeared, the nose sunk and one eye was nearly destroyed; while the general health was so injured, that death followed in a few months". Despite the warnings surrounding mercury use, physicians were slow to accept that they were poisoning their own patients and would continue using calomel well into the 20th century.

Mercury use was hardly limited to medicine. There have been countless industrial applications for mercury compounds although this has declined in recent decades as the neurotoxic aspects of mercury became better known. Mercury continues to be an ingredient in some medications despite ongoing controversy over safe levels of exposure. I won't even try to get into the controversies surrounding mercury exposure in dental amalgams and vaccines. It does seem ironic that activists have attempted to link mercury to autism despite the syndrome being first identified in 1943. Given that children were routinely dosed with dangerous levels of mercury for centuries, it's hard not to wonder why autism cases are rising now despite mercury exposure in children being so greatly reduced.

While many European nations have called for a total ban on mercury use, it's unlikely that the silvery metal's influence will end any time soon.

The Beast Within

It was in the autumn of 1572, following a rash of animal attacks in the woods near Dole, France, that the local peasants were authorized to seek out the werewolf assumed to be responsible. There were few actual sightings of the animal but the "loup garou" had carried off several small children and attacked horsemen who had driven it away " only with great difficulty and danger to their persons". The peasants were instructed "to assemble with pikes, halberts, arquebuses, and sticks, to chase and to pursue the said were-wolf in every place where they may find or seize him; to tie and to kill, without incurring any pains or penalties". Despite their search, it was only on November 8 of that year that peasants came upon a "monstrous creature" attacking a young girl. The creature was driven off although the girl later died of her injuries. Even in the darkness, some of the peasants thought they recognized the creature as a local hermit named Gilles Garnier.

Garnier was not popular in the region and was arrested after fifty witnesses filed depositions against him. Whatever protests of innocence he had were quickly ended by a session on the rack which "persuaded" him to confess to the charges. Garnier was sentenced to be burned alive at the stake and "that his ashes be then scattered to the winds". He was also ordered to bear all court costs and the sentence was carried out on January 18, 1573.

A similar case was brought to trial in 1603 involving a mentally disturbed (and possibly intellectually challenged) boy named Jean Grenier. Following reports of animal attacks on children in Gascony, France, Grenier confessed to all of the attacks and claimed to have eaten some of the children involved. He also stated that he was part of a werewolf "coven" and transformed himself using a "wolf's skin" given to him by a mysterious stranger. Survivors of the attacks confirmed Grenier's testimony and he was found guilty. In a remarkable move for the time, the court concluded that Grenier was mentally ill (but possessed) and he was sentenced to a Franciscan monastery for the rest of his life. When visited in the monastery years later, he was reported to be "diminutive in stature, very shy, and unwilling to look anyone in the face. His eyes were deep set and restless; his teeth long and protruding; his nails black, and in places worn away; his mind was completely barren; he seemed unable to comprehend the smallest things". Jean Grenier died at the age of 20.

There were an estimated 30,000 cases of lycanthropy reported in Europe between 1520 and 1630 alone. The epidemic of werewolf hysteria that plagued Europe seemed to be linked to the witchcraft mania occurring during the same period. Witches were frequently accused of changing themselves into cats or rabbits and attending demonic Sabbaths to meet Satan. Werewolves, in turn, were accused of transforming themselves with the Devil's aid. Convicted werewolves and witches were often condemned to be burned alive (except in England where they were merely hanged).

The werewolf hysteria seemed to be largely fuelled by lurid stories of wolf attacks (which were more likely to be due to wild dogs) and only subsided when wolves were hunted to virtual extinction across Europe. The growing recognition that testimony obtained through torture was basically unreliable probably played a role as well (waterboarding advocates take note). The last major werewolf panic was in Gevaudan, France following a series of killings by a "wolflike creature" between 1763 and 1767. The killings were never solved.

While clinical lycanthropy (the delusion of changing into an animal) remains a recognized psychiatric condition, actual cases tend to be rare (I've never encountered a case myself, alas, although I remain hopeful). Reports in the forensic literature of clinical lycanthropy patients committing violent acts are even rarer (but they have happened). Modern cases of lycanthropy tend to be part of broader psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. Along with the classic werewolf delusion, there have also been reported cases of patients believing that they have been changed into other types of animals including dogs, frogs, and bees. While werefrogs do not evoke the same superstitious terror associated with werewolves, the unusual nature of the psychopathology makes for fascinating case histories in the clinical literature.

Treatment seems to be straightforward as lycanthropic delusions respond well to medication (no burning necessary). Despite the popularity of werewolf movies in the past few years, there has been no evidence of any upsurge of cases and the condition remains rare. Although werewolves live on as a cultural phenomenon, the hysteria that condemned Gilles Garnier to death has mercifully subsided (I hope).

Click here for a recent case history.

The Case Against Wilhelm Reich, Part 2

It was on May 26, 1947 when an article by freelance writer Mildred Brady was published in The New Republic. Titled "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich", Brady's somewhat shrill article was subtitled "The man who blames both neuroses and cancer on unsatisfactory sexual activities has been repudiated by only one scientific journal." The article was filled with innuendoes relating to Reich's sexual theories and the "orgiastic potency" that patients received from his orgone accumulators. She concluded the article by stating that Reich's "cult" was growing and needed to be "dealt with". The Food and Drug Administration launched an investigation that same year to look into Reich's health claims which, in turn, drew in the FBI due to their previous investigation.

The rest of the FBI file covers the results of the investigation and Reich's increasingly irrational denunciations of the FDA and Mildred Brady. He denounced her as a "Communist sniper" who was acting under orders from the Communist party to discredit him with a smear campaign. To ensure that the government was kept informed of his progress, Reich provided the FBI with copies of all of his research papers on orgone energy that were published at his institute in Maine.

While the investigation dragged on, Reich attempted to interest the Atomic Energy Commission in his orgone research for fear of it falling into the hands of foreign agents. After demonstrating his research for representatives of the Commision, they politely informed him that the experiments were "outside the scope of the Atomic Energy Commission". An internal memo included in the file added that scientists who examined Reich's research were of the opinion that "Reich is mentally unsound in his scientific experiments". He also continued with his weather control research and, in 1952, Reich wrote a letter to the Justice Department stating that he would be travelling to other parts of the country to test out his cloudbusting equipment. After proving that he could affect the weather in Rangeley, Maine, he wished to see if he could affect the weather in "desert country" as well. Reich also added that he would be going incognito under the name of Walter Roner as "suspicion and slander on the part of uninformed or sick people has been and is so rampant in my case, in the United States as well as abroad".

After an exhaustive ten-year investigation,the FDA finally concluded that Reich's orgone treatments involved "fraud of the first magnitude". In February 1954, the FDA applied for an injunction against Reich in the Federal Court in Portland, Maine. The injunction asked for a ban on interstate shipping of orgone accumulators as well as on all published literature relating to the devices. Reich refused to appear in court to defend himself as he argued that a court of law should not be used to judge scientific research. The presiding judge, John Clifford, rejected the argument and granted the injunction.

Reich appealed the decision and turned over documents to the FBI as proof of a "red fascist instigated plot" against the Orgone Institute and the United States. His personal assistant (and son-in-law) William Moise attempted to arrange a meeting with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to present the evidence in person. After being told that a meeting would not be possible and that the FBI had no jurisdiction in the case, Moise was sent away. The Bureau also received a telegram dated March 23, 1954 from Reich informing them that a snow storm had struck Rangeley, Maine as he had previously predicted. Reich also announced that he would be flooding the East Coast with rain to prove the value of his experiments (the FBI was not impressed).

Federal authorities seized and destroyed all of Reich's orgone accumulators as well as several tons of his publications. In May, 1956, Reich was arrested for violating the injunction after some of his orgone equipment was moved out of Maine. Once again refusing to appear in court, Reich was charged with contempt and forced to appear. After a spirited trial in which he defended himself, Reich was sentenced to two years in prison. Despite an anguished note to J. Edgar Hoover requesting a personal meeting, Reich was sent to Danbury Federal Prison in Maine where a psychiatrist diagnosed him as "paranoid and delusional".

Wilhelm Reich died in his sleep on November 3, 1957 in his cell in the Federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania where he had been transferred. The cause of death was given as severe aortic stenosis and myocardial scarring although his supporters claimed that a conspiracy was at work to silence him before he could apply for parole. The FBI file includes the results of an autopsy that the family had requested (they had specifically asked that his stomach contents be tested for poisoning) which confirmed the initial diagnosis.

Reich is buried in Orgonon and a replica of his cloudbuster invention stands next to his grave. The  William Reich Museum occupies the same building that used to house his laboratory and medical treatment clinic. There is still considerable controversy over Wilhelm Reich. Skeptics regard him as a quack but his early psychodynamic writings have marked Reich as an influential pioneer in psychotherapy. Even long after his death, the Wilhelm Reich Museum and Trust guards his memory and sponsors original orgone research .

Persecuted genius or eccentric? You make the call.

The Case Against Wilhelm Reich, Part 1

Wilhelm Reich always had a problem with authority figures as the lengthy FBI file on him tends to demonstrate. It was in 2000 when the FBI released 789 pages of the extensive file that had been built up on Reich over the years. The file covers the period from 1940 to a year following his death in 1957 and makes for fascinating (albeit long) reading.

Driven out of Nazi Germany in 1933, he fled to Scandinavia and eventually immigrated to the United States in 1939. Reich settled in New York City and began teaching courses at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan. Despite his early prominence as part of Sigmund Freud's Vienna Circle, it was Reich's prior involvement in European Communist movements that drew the FBI's attention. After concerns were raised by the State Department over Reich being linked with the Medical Advisory board of the American Communist Party, a formal investigation was launched. Details of his past that were highlighted in the reports prepared on him by the FBI include his membership in the German Communist Party and his later expulsion from the Norwegian Communist party for "not adhering closely enough to the party line". The fact that his ex-wife had also been involved in "Communistic activities" did not escape notice either.

Despite his work visa being in order, Reich was detained at Ellis Island in 1941 and his home was searched. Colleagues and staff were questioned and some of his books on leftist political theory were confiscated. In addition to details surrounding his detention, the FBI files made note of Reich's announcement in 1939 of the discovery of "a new form of biological energy which he states comes from the body's organs and that his work has been solely involved in experimenting with this energy which he claims that he is able to control in such a way as to cure cancer". Interviews with fellow psychoanalysts determined that Reich's reputation was "not high professionally because he has gone off on a tangent to develop some new theories relating to sex psychosis and his work is looked down upon generally by the best psychoanalysts in the country". Following a hearing, Reich was released in early 1942 after providing assurance that, while his beliefs were liberal in nature, they were not "Communistic".

In addition to teaching and maintaining a private clinical practice, Reich also began publishing extensively in English. His involvement with the FBI seems to dovetail with a notable change in his writings during this same period. While he had been an ardent Communist before coming to the United States, he then broke ranks with the Communist party completely. He also became increasingly paranoid and denounced Communism as "Red Fascism". Reich often accused leftists of conspiring against him and trying to discredit his theories. His research into orgone energy also took a decidedly bizarre turn. He began a series of experiments showing how orgone energy could be accumulated and used to treat various illnesses. Reich even developed a "cloudbuster" machine designed to manipulate weather patterns by suppressing "negative" orgone energy in the atmosphere. While he contacted Albert Einstein at Princeton and attempted to interest him in the potential value of the orgone devices, the great physicist was not convinced.

By 1942, Reich had permanently relocated to an old farm near Rangeley, Maine which he named "Orgonon". It was there that he continued his research into orgone energy and began using it to treat an extensive range of illnesses including cancer and mental illness. He began manufacturing "orgone accumulators" and also worked with assistants on a motor powered by orgone energy. With dreams of creating an inexhaustible energy source, Reich solicited loans and contributions from interested parties and made ambitious plans to expand his activities further.

And then...

The Stroker’s Legacy

Faith healing has a long and varied history but certain cases still have a special fascination. So it was with Valentine Greatrakes, the Stroker. Born in 1628 in to a prominent Irish family, Greatrakes (also spelled Greatorex or Greatraks) was caught up in the volatile politics of the time. He fought in the English Civil War as part of Oliver Cromwell's army before returning to his family estate in 1654. Aside from his prominent role as one of the interrogators in a witchcraft trial in 1661 (he and other judges were obliged to "prove" that the defendant was a witch using the recommended tortures of the time), there seemed little else in his life to provide a hint of what came later.

It was in 1663 when Greatrakes was struck by an "impulse, or strange persuasion" in his mind. He came to believe that God had given him the power to cure "the King's evil" (as scrofula, or tuberculosis of the lymph nodes, was known in those days). He reportedly told his wife who categorically denounced him as a fool. Despite her objections (and she was hardly the only one), he approached a young boy named William Maher who was disfigured by severe scrofula. According to Greatrakes' own later account, "I laid my hand on the place affected, and prayed to God for Jesus' sake to heal him". Greatrakes took great satisfaction in reporting that the boy had become completely healed within a month. That was the beginning of his healing career.

Over the course of the next two years, Greatrakes, motivated by "further impulses from on high", began healing numerous other diseases including epilepsy, ulcers, ague (chills and fevers), and paralysis. His fame spread quickly and he was swamped by requests for healing. Due to conflicts with his own farm work, Greatrakes established regular hours (three days a week, twelve hours each day) in which he saw patients. He became known as "the Stroker" through his habit of stroking his hands on each invalid as part of the healing session. The explanations that he provided on how his healing worked, which mainly involved casting out the evil spirits causing the disease, did little to reassure the local clergy and physicians. He was finally summoned to a local Bishop's Court and ordered to stop his healing activities. While Greatrakes gave in at first, he quickly began healing again (it was God's will, after all).

In 1666, Greatrakes was contacted by Lord Edward Conway for help in treating his wife's severe migraines. Lady Anne Conway, a brilliant philosopher/writer of her time, was often incapacitated by her headaches and none of the other physicians that she had consulted had been able to help. Greatrakes lived on their Warwickshire estate for months but his stroking sessions did nothing to relieve her pain. As Lady Conway and her husband were prominent in English society, a group of distinguished scholars and physicians gathered at their castle to witness the sessions. Despite his failure with Lady Conway, he still attracted a steady stream of patients who came to the estate to be healed.

Greatrakes then went to London at the request of King Charles II who had asked for a demonstration. Despite a testimonial from Robert Boyle (then president of the Royal Society), Greatrakes failed to impress the court with his healing powers. There seems to be a certain irony in that since the king himself was not shy about holding healing audiences demonstrating his own Royal Touch. Still, Greatrakes spent months in London at a private house at Lincoln's Inn-Fields that reportedly became "the daily resort of all the nervous and credulous women of the metropolis". In that same year, he published a pamphlet titled A Brief Account of Mr. Valentine Greatrakes and Divers of the Strange Cures by him lately performed. Written by himself in a letter Addressed to the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esq. Although Greatrakes then returned to his family farm, he continued to revisit London until his death in 1682. His healing career dwindled over the years and he faded into obscurity.

Writing about Greatrakes In his classic Extraordinary Poplar Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay agreed with most contemporary observers that there was no conscious deception involved. The Stroker genuinely believed in his healing gift even though his successes seemed mostly due to suggestion. Mackey added that: "So great was the confidence in him, that the blind fancied they saw the light which they did not see – the deaf imagined that they heard – the lame that they walked straight, and the paralytic that they had recovered the use of their limbs... Those who saw through the delusion kept their opinion to themselves, knowing how useless it was to declare their disbelief to a people filled with prejudice and admiration". These same words can apply to just about any other "healer" that has come along since Greatrakes' time. Whenever a new healing marvel comes along, skeptics are still forced to deal with the cult of adoration that goes with it.

Fighting miracles is never easy.

The Castrato

There are different traditions concerning why Giovanni Velluti was castrated as a young boy. Born in Montolmo, Italy in 1780, his father had planned a military career for him but this plan changed abruptly when Giovanni developed a high fever. According to the most common legend, his parents had taken him to a local surgeon for treatment and the surgeon, mistaking the parents` intentions, castrated Giovanni instead. That marked the end of any military career for the boy and he was sent to be trained as a singer.

Castration in boys between the ages of seven and twelve prevents the larynx from undergoing the normal physiological changes associated with puberty and enables boy sopranos to keep their large vocal range throughout their lives. While some testosterone continues to be produced by the adrenal glands, the reduced sex hormone levels in their bodies results in other physical changes including lack of facial hair, physical tallness, smooth skin, rounding of the hips and a high speaking voice. The very term "castrato" or "eunuch" was often considered offensive and words such as "musico" or "virtuoso" were preferred (political correctness has a long history).

While castrati have been around since ancient times, the use of castrated boys as Church singers was first introduced in 16th century Spain. Women were not allowed to sing in choirs (due to one of St. Paul's teachings requiring women to be silent in church) and castrati seemed ideal for falsetto roles. The angelic quality of their voices caused this innovation to spread across many European countries but it was in Italy where the tradition of the castrato singer took root. By all accounts, the purity of their voices combined the awesome vocal quality of boy sopranos with the lung capacity of adult men. The spread of opera across the continent made castrati widely sought after as singers and they often became the superstars of their day.

Despite the fact that castrations for non-medical purposes had become illegal by Giovanni`s time, there were still doctors (and even barbers) across Italy who practiced the operation discreetly. The castrations would then be explained away as being due to congenital problems or "accidents". While the primitive nature of the surgery meant that many boys died of blood loss or infection, most survived to continue their musical careers. It may never be known many boys were castrated over the years but some estimates suggest that there were thousands.

The competition among castrati was fierce and only the greatest singers were allowed to become opera stars. For the rest, there were the church choirs and the modest living that these positions provided. Many poor Italian families found that having one son castrated meant an opportunity for the entire family to have a better life as a result. Church doctrine banned castrati from marrying or taking holy orders and their lives tended to be focused exclusively on their music and providing for their families.

Giovanni Velluti is widely considered to be the last great castrato opera singer. While the popularity of castrati as singers and the sponsorship of the Catholic church ensured a steady market for centuries, this era came to an end during Velluti's lifetime. He mesmerized audiences across Europe and many operatic roles were written just for him. Although he was a prima donna by nature with singers and music directors often finding it impossible to work with him, Velluti was in a position to demand (and get) special treatment. He made his London debut in 1825 despite growing English opposition to castrato singers. As the first castrato to sing opera in England in twenty-five years, he certainly had his share of fans and critics. Velluti even became music director for a season but financial problems and poor reviews caused him to leave England. By 1830, he had retired from stage and became a gentleman farmer until his death in 1861.

Aside from his musical career, Velluti became legendary for his flamboyant clothes. feminine good looks, and romantic escapades with numerous women in high society. Contrary to popular belief, castrati are not sexless. If anything, many castrati are said to be able to hold an erection longer than an uncastrated male due to lack of ejaculatory tension. Women often saw Velluti as an ideal lover since there was no pregnancy risk (plus husbands seemed incapable of believing that a castrato could be romancing their wives).

After Velluti's retirement, there were no more roles for castrati in opera and, with a Papal declaration condemning the practice in 1878, few choir roles were available either. Despite official church doctrine, it was only in 1913 when Alessandro Moreschi, the last Vatican castrato, was removed from the Sistine choir. He made two gramophone recordings in 1902 and 1904 which are the only ones of its kind in existence. Even given the poor sound quality, Moreschi's voice evokes an earlier era although he was well past his prime by the time the recordings were made. It was his very public funeral in 1922 that truly marked the end of the castrato age.

While countertenors and falsettos are often used in opera to simulate the castrato effect and androgynous singers continue to have musical careers today, we can only imagine how it must have been during the long period when castrati reigned supreme as singers. It is hard to believe that sexual mutilation of young boys could have been allowed for so long but, like many other examples of similar practices, maybe it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Starved For Science

While the conscientious objectors (COs) who were part of the Civilian Public Service (CPS) carried out a variety of unpleasant duties, one of the most far-reaching involved their participation as research subjects in medical experiments. Under the authority of the Office of Scientific Research and the U.S. Surgeon-General, medical schools and hospitals across the United States conducted a series of medical experiments studying infectious disease and human endurance. Many COs volunteered for research despite the very real dangers that such research faced. Although no deception was used and there was full informed consent, it seems hard to believe that these research studies were carried out given the potential risks. Some of the studies involved deliberate exposure to live viruses including hepatitis, typhus, malaria and pneumonia to determine likelihood of infection and to test new treatments. Other subjects were placed in decompression chambers and subjected to temperature extremes to measure human responses to severe environmental changes.

The Minnesota Hunger Experiment was carried out under the direction of Dr. Ancel Keys of the University of Minnesota Laboratory of Physical Hygiene. It began with a pamphlet titled "Will You Starve That They Be Better Fed?" sent out to the various camps describing a study into the effects of starvation. As the war was drawing to a close, it was becoming clear that famine would be a major  challenge facing post-war reconstruction. The experiment was intended to learn more about malnutrition in human beings and how it could be treated. Of the 100 COs who volunteered, only 36 met the rigorous screening requirements. Another 18 were hired as support staff. The participants were given full information about what would be required and they were also warned about potential long-term risks. The study began with a three month standardization phase in which the subjects received a daily 3200- calorie diet followed by a six-month semi-starvation phase (a daily diet of 1800 calories each). The goal was to reflect the poor diet that was common across much of war-torn Europe. The final three months would be the recovery phase in which the researchers would test different high-protein diets to help the participants return to normal. Over the course of the experiment, the participants lived on the University of Minnesota campus and took their meals together in Shevlin Hall. During the semi-starvation phase which began in February, 1945, each participant was obliged to walk 22 miles (35.4 kilometers) a week either around the campus or on indoor treadmills.

Despite the high idealism of the COs who participated, their enthusiasm quickly diminished as they realized how rigorous their lives became. They reportedly grew more irritable as the effects of their limited diet affected their physical health. Tolerance for cold weather quickly decreased (this was a big problem considering the cold Minnesota winter) and they began experiencing dizziness, fatigue, muscle soreness, hair loss, and tinnitus. Concentration and coordination were also affected and some of the participants who were attending classes were forced to withdraw from their studies. Many of the participants became increasingly obsessed with food and collected recipes. Their libido was also adversely affected. The sight of the emaciated participants around the campus became increasingly common as they began wasting away. Their sunken faces and bellies, protruding ribs, and edema-swollen legs and ankles made them extremely noticeable and they became the subjects of newspaper and magazine articles across the country. When asked if they wanted to withdraw, the participants flatly refused. One participant, Harold Blickenstaff later recalled that "I had just decided that this was what I was going to do and so I was going to do it . . . and so I would say walking by a bakery was like walking by a bank. It might be nice to have what's in there, but it's out of the question. I never debated whether or not I should break diet or do anything else"

One respondent in particular had an extremely difficult time and broke down in the eighth week of the semi-starvation phase. Going into town, he went on an ice-cream binge and tearfully confessed following his return to the laboratory. On that basis, the participants were placed on a "buddy system" and no participant was allowed out alone. Despite this system, the respondent who had broken the fast began stealing food and was later released from the program due to severe emotional distress. He was placed in the psychiatric ward of the university hospital and diagnosed with a borderline psychotic episode which subsided after several days. Three other participants were also dropped from the study due to concerns about the pattern of weight loss noted.

Ironically, it was the three month re-feeding period that was the hardest part for many participants. Some were surprised to find that they were still losing weight despite the increased rations (due to loss of edema). As not all subjects received the same number of calories in their re-feeding diet, the effects of starvation continued longer for some than others. One participant would cut off three fingers with an axe while chopping wood although he was vague afterward over whether this was deliberate. He remained to complete the study however. Although the worst symptoms of starvation had passed by the end of the re-feeding period, full recovery would take considerably longer for most of the participants.

The results of the Minnesota Hunger Experiment were written up in a 1,300 page two-volume report titled The Biology of Human Starvation that was released in 1950. In addition to their own findings, the authors included information about the Siege of Leningrad, the Warsaw Ghetto, Japanese and German concentration camps, and field data from various post-war countries. World War II provided all too many opportunities to learn about the effects of starvation on human beings and most of the published studies remain classics in the field.

It is highly unlikely that medical experiments done with COs during World War II would ever be approved by a modern ethical review board and their value to science remains controversial. Still, medical professionals working with famine-stricken populations continue to use the Minnesota results for guidance in dealing with the effects of malnutrition. A number of the study participants went on to distinguished careers as academics and peace activists but when 18 of the survivors were interviewed in 2004, they emphatically stated that their involvement in the Minnesota Hunger Experiment was one of their most important achievements. It is a fitting legacy for these people of conscience that tends to be largely forgotten today.

Click here for more information on the Minnesota Hunger Experiment (pdf)

In Good Conscience

Being a person of conscience is never easy, especially during wartime when governments begin mass conscription to bolster their armed forces. Whenever drafting begins, the problems involved in dealing with conscientious objectors who, by virtue of their religious or political beliefs, refuse to serve in the military inevitably arise. Conscientious objectors (also known as COs or "conchies") in many countries were often allowed to serve in non-combatant roles (although there were frequent cases of COs being placed in military prisons where they experienced ill-treatment and abuse). When the United States entered World War II in 1941, there remained the problem of what to do with the estimated 72,000 COs who filed for exemption from conscription (approximately 0.15% of all draftees). Many of these COs belonged to pacifist religions (including Mennonites, Quakers and Seventh-Day Adventists) and it was these churches that spearheaded a new solution. The Civilian Public Service (CPS) was established in 1941 to allow COs to serve their country in various non-combat support roles. For the years that the CPS was in operation, 12,000 COs were interned in camps across the United States and Puerto Rico. During their internment, the COs worked in tasks that included soil conservation, forest fighting, medical research (as test subjects), and social services. Beyond a small allowance (the churches provided most of the funding for the CPS), COs received no compensation for their work, no medical insurance and no  death or disability benefits despite their often hazardous duties. Life in the CPS camps was harsh as the COs lived in barracks and worked long hours with little recreation. Their families often faced severe hardships, due to the lack of financial support as well as the frequent harassment that they faced from their communities (COs were widely reviled for not "doing their part" for the war effort). While the churches were nominally in charge of the CPS program, they had little actual control over the day-to-day operations or conditions under which COs were expected to live. The American Civil Liberties Association actively denounced the conditions in the CPS camps (they viewed the COS as being more poorly treated than German prisoners) but the program continued until 1947 (well after the end of the war).

One area where COs were widely used was in working with psychiatric patients. The war effort had led to a critical shortage of hospital workers (through lack of psychiatrists as well as orderlies who had left for better paying jobs) and, by the end of 1945, 2000 CPS workers were working in psychiatric institutions across twenty U.S. states. Many of these workers reported being appalled by the poor conditions under which mental patients were expected to live. The use of physical restraints and punishments (including beatings) to control patients was common and CPS workers were instrumental in developing non-violent alternatives. The CPS also helped publicize the widespread abuses that they found in psychiatric hospitals across the United States (this was long before psychiatric medications were introduced) and paved the way for crucial reforms. With the assistance of Eleanor Roosevelt, COs helped launch what would later become the National Mental Health Foundation which, in turn, merged with other agencies in 1950 to become the National Association of Mental Health (now Mental Health America).

Long after their term of service with the CPS ended, former COs would continue their activist work for mental health reform as well as post-war relief efforts across Europe. It was because of this relief work that the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize was presented to Quaker organizations in the U.S. and U.K.(largely staffed by COs). Despite later wars, the CPS was never reformed in the U.S. and conscientious objectors continue to be imprisoned in countries around the world.

COs served in other areas as well, including as subjects in dangerous medical experiments. More on that next week....

The Unforgettable Shereshevsky

It all began with a daily meeting at a newspaper in Moscow, sometime in the 1920s.

The editor was handing out assignments to the various reporters and was annoyed to note that one of the newer reporters had neglected to bring along a notebook. Solomon Shereshevsky (sometimes spelled Sherashevsky), then 29 years old, was quietly listening to the editor speak while all of his fellow reporters were busy writing down their assignments. The editor had noticed this before and decided to give his employee a scolding for not paying proper attention. When meeting him afterwards, the editor was astonished to find that Shereshevsky was able to remember every detail of the meeting with perfect accuracy. The journalist was just as astonished at his editor's reaction since he thought his perfect memory was normal. Always on the lookout for an interesting story, the editor decided to send his reporter to the local university for testing. It was there that Solomon Shereshevsky met Alexander Romanovitch Luria and an amazing collaboration began.

Over the course of the next 30 years, Luria would carry out an extensive series of experiments examining the journalist who would become his most famous case. Solomon Veniaminovitch Shereshevsky (identified only as "S" in Luria's writings) was born in Latvia and was part of an accomplished family (his father was a bookstore owner who could recall the location of every book in the store while his mother knew much of the Torah by heart). Although he had originally trained as a violinist, Shereshevsky became a journalist after an ear infection ended his musical career. Given his perfect recall, conventional memory testing was impossible but Luria was able to detail the processes underlying how Shereshevsky was able to memorize details so accurately. During the research trials, Shereshevsky was able to recall extensive lists of words, numbers and even nonsense syllables without mistakes and with only occasional hesitation. He could also report the numbers or letters in reverse order and could retain the information, seemingly indefinitely. Even events from early childhood could be recalled (including things that happened when he was still in his crib). There also appeared to be no limit to his digit span (as opposed to the seven to nine items that most humans can manage).

Based on his research, Luria concluded that Shereshevsky possessed an extreme form of synaesthesia which he used to convert various stimuli into visual images. It was this visual imagery that was one of the key factors in his astonishing recall. Whatever he was asked to remember, he would first mentally convert into visual images but often needed extra time to make the conversion. The perfect recall only failed when this process was disrupted in any way. He was even able to convert music and numbers into visual imagery by imagining the tones or numbers visually.

There were some intriguing limits to what Shereshevsky could remember however. He had a surprisingly poor memory for faces or voices heard over a telephone. He also had difficulty with abstract logical concepts and metaphors and often appeared slow and forgetful to others meeting him. His synaesthesia made him acutely sensitive to changes in his environment (for him to enjoy food in a restaurant, there had to be the right kind of background music playing).

Alexander Luria published his research results in 1968 as The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory which has since become one of the great classics of psychology. He died in 1977 after an accomplished career as a neuropsychologist.

As for Solomon Shereshevshy? His amazing memory was also a serious handicap since his visual imaging meant that he frequently spent his life in a nonstop daydream. He gave up his journalism career and became a professional mnemonist giving regular shows to paying audiences. Despite his success, he never had great satisfaction as a performer and gave it up after a while. The last reference that I could find on him was that he became a taxi driver in Moscow but his life faded into obscurity afterward. Aside from a possible death date in 1958, there seems to be little else available.

By his own reckoning, Shereshevsky viewed himself as a failure in life since he was unable to use his vast memory in a way that he found personally fulfilling. He had wanted to be remembered for accomplishing something "great" in his life and, given his place in the history of psychology, may have succeeded. In 1998, Peter Brook released a theatre production based on Shereshevsky titled Je Suis Un Phenomene (I am a Phenomenon). Solomon Shereshevsky will be remembered.

After Count Alfred

There is an anecdote about Alfred Korzybski that goes as follows: Giving a lecture to a group of students, Korzybski stopped the lesson and took a box of biscuits from his briefcase. He said that he was hungry and offered to share the biscuits with the attentive students sitting in the front row. Some of the students took him up on the offer and began to chew on the biscuits along with their lecturer. When asked, the students agreed that the biscuits were tasty. It was at this point that Korzybski tore off the white paper covering the box containing the biscuits to reveal the picture of a dog's head and the title on the box: Dog Cookies. The students who had eaten the biscuits were appalled and two of them ran out of the lecture hall to the washroom to throw up. Korzybski then reportedly said, "You see, ladies and gentlemen. I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter."

A Polish count by birth, Alfred Korzybski came to North American in 1916 and later became an American citizen. His first book, Manhood of Humanity, was published in 1921 and introduced readers to what would later be known as the General Semantics movement. Korzybski had a lifelong fascination with the intricacies of human language and the ideological traps that humans fall into with respect to natural language and "common sense" assumptions about the reality around us. He recognized that human beings were limited by their own physical limitations, i.e., the range of their senses, and the structure imposed by language. Two of his most famous sayings: "The word is not the thing" and "The map is not the territory" helped to highlight the human tendency to be bogged down in semantic representations of reality rather than the reality itself. In particular, Korzybski railed against what he termed "Aristotelian" modes of thinking based on Aristotle's logical premises (or more accurately, the overly rigid application of simplistic logical constructs to structure reality). He considered all human knowledge to be based on assumptions which need to be continually revised as circumstances change. Korzybski favoured multi-valued logic systems linked to probability theory and the use of scientific induction to determine truth. He also recognized the human capacity for time-binding (passing information from one generation to the next) which largely separated humans from the other animals.

Korzybski went on to found the Institute of General Semantics in 1938 and, by the time of his death in 1950, his influence on science and literature had become immense. Korzybski's admirers included Gregory Bateson, R. Buckminster Fuller, Alvin Toffler, William Burroughs, Robert Heinlein and A.E. van Vogt. As he had written at length on the therapeutic applications of General Semantics, it was only natural that later psychotherapists would draw heavily on Korzybski's writings. Albert Ellis freely recognized Korzybski's influence in the development of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy as did Frederick Perls and Paul Goodman with respect to Gestalt Therapy. Many other pioneers of cognitive psychotherapy drew on Alfred Korzybski's work as well.

Ironically, one of Korzybski's most influential students was L. Ron Hubbard who drew heavily on Korzybski's writings for his own seminal classic Dianetics published in 1950 (some would say to the point of plagiarism). While Hubbard acknowledged Korzbyski's writings in the introduction to his early classic, any pretense at following his logical principles had been completely abandoned by the time Scientology was introduced.

Perhaps it's just as well that Count Alfred never lived to see that.