Tag Archives: League for Mental Hygiene and Prophylaxis

Sorrow, Vice, and Thyroids

Many Physicians Believed Insanity Stemmed from Physical Causes

Some of the new ideas about insanity and ways to prevent it helped doctors believe in cures after a long period in which they had resigned themselves to believing that most insanity was chronic.

An article from the November 12, 1922 edition of The Washington Post quoted Dr. Toulouse, a renowned French alienist, who had founded the League for Mental Hygiene and Prophylaxis. He believed that “half the occupants of the world’s insane asylums are not mad, but diseased.” Continue reading