ABSTRACT
There have always been treatments for mental illness. Evidence exists of early trepanning efforts, and through the ages other techniques have been used such as blood letting, confinement, dietary interventions, environmental interventions, talking therapies of various modalities, industrial therapies, insulin comas, and ice baths among many others that do not come so easily to mind. Often the means by which a particular treatment came into the canon of therapies was via a distinguished advocate teaching the technique to a group of people who would later propagate it. Alternatively, the view was held that only physicians, due to the serious nature of their work, would make the correct decision regarding treatments. For example in 1879, writing in the American Journal of Insanity (now the American Journal of Psychiatry) one author noted that in relation to treatment, doctors were people of such sober judgement and developed knowledge that ‘all remedies whatever are at the disposal of practitioners to reject or employ them under the sole guidance of their own judgment’ (Bodington, 1879, p. 453).
