Deadly & horrible attempts by doctors to cure insanity | Andrew Scull and Lex Fridman

Summary by Krater

Lex Fridman and a guest discuss the history of psychiatry, exploring historical treatments like insulin shock therapy, malaria therapy for syphilis, and surgical interventions, and how germ theory shifted medical perspectives.

From the video

Answers: What is the history of biological psychiatry and how did the discovery of infectious causes for mental illness change medicine?

• General paresis of the insane
• Insulin shock therapy
• Syphilis and mental illness
• Malaria therapy
• Germ theory of disease
• Antiseptic surgery
• Classification of mental illness
• Surgical interventions in psychiatry
• Placebo effect in surgery

What it concludes

• General paralysis of the insane accounted for up to 25 percent of asylum admissions in the early 1900s and linked organic brain disease to mental illness.
• Tertiary syphilis, specifically Treponema pallidum lodged in the brain, was discovered to be the infectious cause of general paralysis of the insane.
• Malaria therapy by Julius Wagner-Jauregg and lobotomy by Egas Moniz are the only two Nobel Prizes ever awarded in psychiatry.
• Penicillin replaced malaria fever therapy as the cure for syphilis in 1943 and remains the gold standard treatment with no confirmed resistance.
• Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch proved that microorganisms cause disease in the late 1800s, founding modern germ theory.
• Joseph Lister applied germ theory to surgery by spraying carbolic acid, cutting post-operative death rates sharply.