3 w. ago
The Sleep Room by Jon Stock review – haunting accounts of horrific medical abuse
A book about psychiatrist William Sargant’s unethical treatments at a London hospital in the 1960s is all the more powerful for its vivid patient testimoniesA child of 14 is forced to walk on to a stage and strip to her underwear. Tiny and mute beneath the stacked rows of medical students, she is paraded for their benefit by a consultant psychiatrist some 44 years her senior. It is 1966 – the peak of Swinging 60s’ hedonism, liberalism and youthful counterculture – but in a locked psychiatric ward in London’s Royal Waterloo hospital, unspeakable violations are being inflicted upon patients.The perpetrator-in-chief, William Sargant, is the subject of thriller writer Jon Stock’s first nonfiction book, The Sleep Room: A Very British Medical Scandal. One of the most notorious figures in British psychiatry, Sargant initially wished to be a physician. He pivoted to psychiatry after one of his earliest pieces of research met with a humiliating reception at the Royal College of Physicia...
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