William Sargant

William Walters Sargant (24 April 1907 – 27 August 1988) was a British psychiatrist who is remembered for the evangelical zeal with which he promoted treatments such as psychosurgery, deep sleep treatment, electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy.

Sargant studied medicine at St John's College, Cambridge, and qualified as a doctor at St Mary's Hospital, London.

His ambition to be a physician was thwarted by a disastrous piece of research and a nervous breakdown, after which he turned his attention to psychiatry [REFERENCE NEEDED].

Having trained under Edward Mapother at the Maudsley Hospital, in South London, he worked at the Sutton Emergency Medical Service during the Second World War.

His father lost most of his money in the depression in the late 1920s and the scholarship allowed Sargant to continue his medical education.

After qualifying as a doctor he worked as a house-surgeon and house-physician at St Mary's and looked set for a successful career as a physician.

But in 1934—four years after qualifying as a doctor—a nervous breakdown and spell in a mental hospital cancelled his plans.

Sargant would later attribute this period of depression to undiagnosed tuberculosis, although research which he conducted on the use of iron, in very high doses, for the treatment of pernicious anaemia was not well received and this disappointment may have contributed to his breakdown.

After his recovery, Sargant worked as a locum at Hanwell Hospital, and then for a while helped his brother-in-law at his Nottingham general practice, before deciding on a career in psychiatry.

In 1935 he was offered a post by Edward Mapother at the Maudsley Hospital.

In his autobiography Sargant describes how Mapother's views coincided with his own: 'the future of psychiatric treatment lay in the discovery of simple physiological treatments which could be as widely applied as in general medicine'.

Soon after he arrived at the Maudsley, Sargant was involved in testing amphetamine as a new treatment for depression and took it himself while studying for the diploma in psychological medicine.

Sargant would take a variety of drugs to treat his depression throughout his life.

Another treatment introduced at the Maudsley while Sargant was there was insulin shock therapy.

In 1938 Sargant was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship to spend a year at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, under Professor Stanley Cobb.

Whilst there he did some experiments on over-breathing and developed a theory that the difference between normal and neurotic people is that the latter have lost their suggestibility.

On a visit to Washington he arranged to meet Walter Freeman and see three of his patients who had undergone psychosurgical operations.

Although the results were not altogether successful, Sargant resolved to introduce the operation into Britain.

At the outbreak of war in September 1939 Sargant returned to Britain to find that the Maudsley had been evacuated and divided into two—one half going to Mill Hill School in North London and the other half setting up a hospital in the old Belmont Workhouse near Sutton, Surrey.

In 1948 he was appointed director of the department of psychological medicine at St Thomas' Hospital, London, and remained there until (and after) his retirement in 1972, whilst also treating patients at other hospitals, building up a lucrative private practice in Harley Street, and working as a media psychiatrist.

Sargant co-authored a textbook on physical treatment in psychiatry that ran to five editions.

He wrote numerous articles in the medical and lay press, an autobiography, The Unquiet Mind, and a book titled Battle for the Mind in which he discusses the nature of the process by which our minds are subject to influence by others.

Although remembered as a major force in British psychiatry in the post-war years, his enthusiasm for discredited treatments such as insulin shock therapy and deep sleep treatment, his distaste for all forms of psychotherapy, and his reliance on dogma rather than clinical evidence have confirmed his reputation as a controversial figure whose work is seldom cited in modern psychiatric texts.

Sargant was born into a large and wealthy Methodist family in Highgate, London.

His father was a City broker, his mother, Alice Walters, was the daughter of a Methodist minister from a family of wealthy Welsh brewers.

Five of his uncles were preachers.

He had two brothers—human rights campaigner Thomas Sargant and Bishop of Mysore, Norman C. Sargant, and five sisters.

Sargant went to the Leys School in Cambridge and then studied medicine at St John's College, Cambridge.

He did not excel academically but played rugby for St John's College, was president of Cambridge University Medical Society and collected autographs of famous medical men.

Sargant obtained a rugby scholarship to complete his medical education at St Mary's Hospital.

Sargant was sent, along with H.J. Shorvon, clinical director Eliot Slater, and medical superintendent Louis Minski to Belmont workhouse—renamed the Sutton Emergency Medical Service (in 1953 the name of the hospital would revert to Belmont).

The hospital, which took both civilian and military patients, was jointly controlled by the Ministry of Health and London County Council.

Sargant described his frustration when London County Council medical advisors tried to curb his experimentation with new treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy and psychosurgery (also called leucotomy) but, as he said "we generally got our own way in the end".

They were, for example, only allowed to carry out individual psychosurgical operations with the approval of the Council advisors.

When the doctors advised against operation, Sargant got round this by sending patients to be operated on by Wylie McKissock at St George's Hospital, (where Eliot Slater was temporarily in charge of the psychiatric department).

It was, he said, "doing good by stealth".

But critics saw him as someone of extreme views who was cruel and irresponsible and refused to listen to advice; some suggested that he was motivated by repressed anger rather than a desire to help people.

Sargant selected neurotic patients, especially those with obsessional ruminations, for operation, which carried with it a significant risk of death, personality deterioration, epileptic seizures, and incontinence.

After the Dunkirk evacuation the Sutton Emergency Medical Service received large numbers of military psychiatric casualties and Sargant developed abreaction techniques – patients would relive traumatic experiences under the influence of barbiturates.

He also used modified insulin treatment, electroconvulsive treatment and sedation in the treatment of military patients.