Evidence

DR. BENJAMIN RUSH, American physician, held to the view that Blacks derived their skin color from a condition called Negritude. When cured of this condition, wrote Rush, the skin of the victim would turn white.

Rush also taught therapeutic procedures which were even then regarded as dangerous and ineffective. One of his prize students applied Rush's teachings and treated a patient who compained of a sore throat with bloodletting: nine pints of blood were removed from the patient's body in 24 hours. This therapy failed, resulting in the death of the patient, George Washington, the first President of the United States.

Today, Rush is widely regarded as the father of American psychiatry. His likeness adorns the seal of the American Psychiatric Association.

DR. HENRY COTTON treated psychotic patients with gastrointestinal surgery and by extracting teeth. 43% of his patients died. Upon his death, the American Journal of Psychiatry hailed his work as "an extraordinary record by one of the most stimulating figures of our generation".

LOUIS TSAVARIS: Sentenced to 15 years in prison for killing a patient with whom he was sexually involved.

DR. JOHN NATHANIEL ROSEN developed a technique for treating schizophrenic patients that involved slapping them. In 1971, he received the Man of the Year Award from the American Academy of Psychotherapy.

ANTONIO DE GUZMAN, psychiatrist, was sentenced to 3-4 years in prison and 15 years' probation in 1998 for fondling three young male patients.

CARL LICHTMAN, psychologist, pleaded guilty in 1996 to defrauding 36 insurance carriers of $3.5 million for therapy sessions that never took place.

JOHN ORPIN, psychiatrist, was convicted and jailed for six years for sexually assaulting female patients during bizarre hypnotic therapy sessions.

HARVEY LOTHRINGER: In 1962, this psychiatrist killed a 19-year-old college student and tried to hide the crime by cutting her up with a scalpel and power saw and flushing her down the toilet in his Queens, New York home. He pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter but as late as 1996 was still working in a professional capacity in Florida, a member once again of the American Psychiatric Association.

JAMES E McCLENDON: This Georgia psychiatrist was convicted in 1998 of billing the state's Medicaid program $6.6 million, claiming to have given 488 hours of psychotherapy to children every week.

KEITH HAYNES: Lost his license after being accused of sexual assault on a 16-year-old boy who then killed himself.

OMAR SABADIA: South African psychiatrist arranged to have his wife killed through one of his patients so that he could collect on her life insurance policy.

FREDERICK APTOWITZ: Paid a patient $3,000 to plant explosives under the car of a former employee who was suing him for sexual harassment.

BERT POTTER: This New Zealand psychiatric nurse was jailed for 7½ years for sexually abusing his own children.

MICHAEL GRINBERG: This California psychiatrist pleaded guilty in 1993 to charges of soliciting the murder of a former girlfriend. Grinberg, a sex therapist, hired a hit man (who turned out to be an undercover police officer) to kill the girl.

EDWARD PATRICK HOUSTON: Senior psychiatrist in Australia was sentenced to 3½ years in jail for exchanging drugs for sex with a prison inmate under his care.

OLAVO MACHON: British psychiatrist convicted of plotting to smuggle heroin into great Britain. Machon worked at the drug dependency unit at London's St. Thomas Hospital, caring for heroin and cocaine addicts.

ERNST RUDIN: This German psychiatrist was a staunch supporter of the "science" of eugenics, which held that racial purity was best maintained by exterminating racial minorities. Rudin achieved the high point of his career in the Nazi exterminations of Jews, Gypsies, and other "undesirables".

HENDRIK VERWOERD: Prime Minister of South Africa, widely credited with being the architect of apartheid, a social system which systematically subjugated blacks on a nationwide basis. Not surprisingly, Verwoerd received his professional training as a psychologist.

JAMES HARRINGTON WHITE: This Orange County (California) psychiatrist was charged with and convicted of forced sodomy of a male patient. White was found to have drugged young men and then videotaped himself having sex with them.

JOVAN RASKOVIC (pictured), RADOVAN KARADZIC, and SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC: Raskovic and Karadzic, psychiatrists, were recognized by a resolution signed by members of the Council of Europe as being the architects of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and Serbia. Milosevic, a former patient of Karadzic, financed and perpetrated the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. He is currently (2002) under prosecution by the War Crimes Tribunal.

T. J. Solomon: A student at Heritage High School in Georgia, he was being treated with Ritalin when he opened fire on and wounded six classmates.

Shawn Cooper: A 15-year-old student in Idaho, he fired two shotgun rounds, narrowly mssing students and school staff. He was taking Ritalin.

Kip Kinkel: Took Prozac and Ritalin and attended "anger management" classes, then shot and killed his parents and then killed two and wounded 22 at his high school in Oregon.

Jeremy Strohmeyer: Raped and murdered a seven-year-old girl in Las Vegas, he had been prescribed Dexedrine and started taking it a week before the killing.

Edmund Kemper: In 1964, he admitted to shooting his grandparents and was sent to Atascadero State Hospital for psychiatric treatment. On the recommendation of two psychiatrists, he was released five years later. In 1972, he killed and decapitated two women. Four months later, he killed a 15-year-old girl, had sex with the dead body, and then dismembered it. Later that year he was examined by two court-appointed psychiatrists and given a clean bill of health. Two months later, Kemper confessed to the brutal murders of eight women, one of whom was his own mother.

McCajah Harris: Raped and stabbed a woman to death two weeks after being released from prison under the recommendation of a psychiatrist.

Patrick Purdy: Killed five and injured 30 with an assault rifle at a Stockton California school. Purdy had been in and out of psychiatric hands since the age of 14 and had been taking three different psychiatric drugs for two years prior to his rampage.

John Hinckley: Shot President Ronald Reagan and several others in a psychiatric drug-induced frenzy.

Charles Westover: Rock legend (stage name Del Shannon) saw a psychiatrist in 1990 and then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a .22 caliber rifle after taking Prozac for 15 days.

Norma Jean Mortenson: A phenomenally successful actress began a long career decline that ended in suicide from an overdose of psychiatric drugs. On the last day of her life, she spent six hours with her psychiatrist. Her stage name: Marilyn Monroe.

Robert Walker: Actor, died after an ovedose of drugs administered by psychiatrist Frederick Hacker.

Judy Garland: In psychiatric hands for years, she underwent electroshock treatments and by 1968 was taking as many as 40 tablets of Ritalin a day. She died of a drug overdose in 1969.

Ernest Hemingway: Prizewinning novelist committed suicide, despondent about the effects of electroshock therapy he had been given.

Frances Farmer: Stage and screen actress of the '30s and '40s, she had this to say about her psychiatric therapy: "I was raped by orderlies, gnawed on by rats and poisoned by tainted food. I was chained in padded cells, strapped to straitjackets and half drowned in ice baths."

Kurt Cobain: A psychiatric patient from childhood, this talented musician committed suicide after being admitted to a psychiatric treatment center in 1994.

John D'Angelo: of Tempe, Arizona, shot and killed his daughter and her best friend and then killed himself. D'Angelo had been seeing a psychiatrist and was taking the psychiatric drugs Xanax and Halcion prior to the murders.

Joseph Wesbecker: went into the Standard Gravure Building in Louisville Kentucky and opened fire, killing eight former co-workers and wounding 12 others before killing himself. At the time of his rampage, Wesbecker had a high level of the psychiatric drug Prozac in his blood.

David Peterson: decided to get back at his psychiatrist for not changing the drug he was being given. He walked out of a mental institution in Connecticut, bought a hunting knife and then stabbed a nine-year-old girl to death.

Charles Knowles: Killed two Detroit police officers. He had been subjected to psychiatric treatment and drugs, including Haldol, over a period of 19 years. Michigan State Mental Health Director Thomas Watkins admitted that Knowles had "no real history of acts of violence" prior to his psychiatric treatment.

James Wilson: had been taking Xanax before he entered the Oakland Elementary School in Greenwood, South Carolina and shot and killed two 8-year-old girls, wounded seven other children and wounded two teachers.

Hank Adams: This former San Diego Deputy Sheriff shot his wife and himself to death in front of his seventeen-year-old daughter. Adams, who was taking Prozac, had no history of violence.

Emanuel Tsegaye: Killed three co-workers and wounded another with a handgun, he finally took his own life as well. Tsegaye had been kept on psychiatric drugs since his release, three years earlier, from Perkins Psychiatric Institution.

Betty Hahn: Beat her mother to death with a hammer in 1988. Hahn had been given Pamelor and Xanax, two psychiatric drugs known to produce violent behavior.

Mary Feurst: was released by psychiatrists in 1982 after a "significant recovery" from homicidal thoughts. One month later, she killed her own two children with a .38 caliber revolver.