Henry Andrews Cotton

Henry Andrews Cotton (1876–1933) was an American psychiatrist who served as medical director of the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton from 1907 to 1930. He is best known for promoting the theory that mental illnesses were caused by untreated bodily infections, leading him to routinely remove patients' teeth, tonsils, spleens, colons, ovaries, and other organs in an attempt to cure psychiatric conditions. These practices persisted despite statistical reviews that disproved his claims of high cure rates and revealed high mortality rates from the procedures. Cotton died in 1933, and his surgical approach is now widely regarded as pseudoscientific.