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Infectious insanities, surgical solutions: Bayard Taylor Holmes, dementia praecox and laboratory science in early 20th-century America. Part 1

Psychology Department, DeSales University, Center Valley, PA 18034-9568, USA. Richard.Noll{at}desales.edu

After his 17-year-old son suddenly developed a chronic psychotic illness in 1905, Bayard Taylor Holmes (1852–1924), a Chicago physician and surgeon with no psychiatric training, conducted both library and laboratory research on dementia praecox, as described in Part 1 of this two-part study. By late 1915 he believed he had found support for a focal infection theory of its aetiology – an ergot-like toxaemia caused by faecal stasis in the caecum. Holmes was also the editor of what is believed to be the first medical journal named after a psychiatric disorder: Dementia Praecox Studies. Part 2 will describe Holmes’ adoption of a rational therapy (using it first on his son, who died), and his founding of a Psychiatric Research Laboratory.

Key Words: autointoxication theory in psychiatry • Bayard Taylor Holmes • dementia praecox • focal infection theory in psychiatry • surgical treatments in psychiatry

History of Psychiatry, Vol. 17, No. 2, 183-204 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X06059456


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