Doctors once deliberately infected psychiatric patients with malaria as medical treatment.The resulting fevers were believed to interrupt mental illness. Temporary improvement was recorded as success. The practice was formalized, scaled, and ultimately rewarded.This is the history of malaria therapy—and how intentional infection became institutional medicine.

For decades, hospitals restrained patients under physician orders.Straps, cuffs, and locked positions were used not as punishment, but as prescribed care.Stillness was recorded as improvement.Compliance was mistaken for recovery.This is the history of mechanical restraint in institutional medicine—and how control was confused for treatment.

The Rest Cure was once a widely prescribed medical treatment.Patients were isolated.Conversation was limited.Reading and writing were discouraged.Doctors believed silence would calm the nervous system.Withdrawal was recorded as improvement.

Extreme bed rest was once prescribed as medical care.Doctors believed movement exhausted the nervous system.Stillness was thought to restore it.Weeks turned into months.Patients weakened, but compliance was recorded as progress.

Cold hydrotherapy was once a standard psychiatric treatment.Patients were submerged for hours.Sometimes restrained.Sometimes unable to leave.Hospitals recorded calm as improvement.Compliance as recovery.

In the mid-20th century, doctors believed mental illness could be cured by severing connections in the brain.The results were immediate.Patients became calm.Wards grew quiet.Institutions regained control.Pre-frontal lobotomy was not hidden medicine. It was published, taught, exported, and celebrated — even awarded the highest honor in science.This short case file examines how a procedure that erased resistance was mistaken for recovery, and why silence was accepted as proof of success.

In the mid-20th century, doctors deliberately pushed psychiatric patients into life-threatening comas.They believed extreme shock could interrupt mental illness and restore order to the brain.Insulin Shock Therapy was not fringe medicine.It was taught, endorsed, and repeated for years inside respected hospitals.This video examines how a dangerous procedure became standard care — and why it took so long to stop.

At one hospital, patients began improving after their teeth were removed.This was recorded as success.Henry Cotton was a respected psychiatrist and superintendent of a state hospital. His methods were not fringe medicine — they were endorsed, documented, and defended as effective treatment.Cotton believed mental illness was caused by hidden infections. When patients became quieter and more compliant after procedures, the institution called it recovery.Many patients died. Others were permanently harmed. But the practice continued because the metric was obedience, not health.This short case file examines how authority, consensus, and misread outcomes allowed harm to persist inside mainstream medicine.