Elmer Ernest Southard

Elmer Ernest Southard

E.E. Southard, M.D.
Born July 28, 1876
Boston, Massachusetts
Died February 8, 1920 (aged 43)
New York City
Nationality American
Fields Neuropsychiatry
Neuropathology
Institutions Boston Psychopathic Hospital
Alma mater Harvard Medical School
Influences Emil Kraepelin
Influenced Myrtelle Canavan
Karl Menninger
Robert Yerkes

Elmer Ernest Southard (July 28, 1876 – February 8, 1920) was an American neuropsychiatrist, neuropathologist, professor and author. Born in Boston, Southard lived there for almost his entire life. He attended Boston Latin School, then completed college and medical school at Harvard University. While studying at Harvard, he distinguished himself as a chess player. Southard briefly studied in Germany, then returned to the United States as a pathologist at Danvers State Hospital. He held academic appointments at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School.

Southard headed the Boston Psychopathic Hospital after its opening in 1912. There he pioneered the pathologic study of the brain and was particularly interested in the study of shell shock and schizophrenia. He published several books, including Shell Shock and Other Neuropsychiatric Problems, which included nearly one thousand case histories. Southard served as president of the American Medico-Psychological Association and the Boston Society of Psychiatry and Neurology. He held advisory positions with the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service and with the Eugenics Record Office.

Southard was also an influential mentor, providing guidance to several well-known figures in psychiatry and psychology. He worked with Myrtelle Canavan early in her career, and he inspired Karl Menninger's interest in psychiatry. Comparative psychologist Robert Yerkes referred to Southard as "my master of psychopathology."[1]

He was married to Dr. Mabel Fletcher Austin, a Wellesley College professor, and the couple had three children. Southard died of pneumonia in 1920 while on a trip to New York City to deliver lectures at a medical society meeting.

Early life

Southard was born in Boston in 1876 to Martin Southard and Olive Wentworth Knowles. His paternal ancestors included Mayflower passenger and Plymouth Colony leader Myles Standish. His mother was descended from some of the early residents of New Hampshire and Maine.[2] According to biographer Frederick Gay, Southard's parents were only modestly successful in academics. His mother was a schoolteacher for several years, while his father had supervised a cotton waste factory and had started his own trucking business. His father had made enough money to ensure that Southard did not have to work during his undergraduate and graduate studies.[3]

Southard's mother had once commented that once he learned to read, he had taken full responsibility for his education.[4] He was influenced academically by a paternal aunt, a Greek scholar who had graduated from Oberlin College. A cousin became a prominent attorney in Bath.[3] Southard attended Boston Latin School. Southard's father, aunt and school headmaster Arthur Irving Fiske stimulated Southard's lifelong interest in language and the meanings of words.[5] Despite his tall, solid build and the fact that he walked about four miles per day to attend school, Southard was not adept at manual labor or athletics.[6] Graduating from Boston Latin School in 1893, Southard had earned academic awards in reading and English essay.[7]

Southard earned an A.B. from Harvard College in 1897 and a medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1901. While studying at Harvard, Southard was a noted chess player for the college. In an 1899 newspaper article covering an Ivy League chess tournament, Southard was described as Harvard's chief chess player. The article noted that "it is probable that as long as he is engaged in the tournament, Harvard will win the cup."[8] Shortly after finishing his medical degree, he spent a brief time studying at the Senckenberg Institute at Frankfurt and the University of Heidelberg in Germany.[9]

Career

Danvers State Hospital, where Southard held a faculty appointment early in his career

Appointments

After returning from Germany, Southard interned in pathology at Boston City Hospital. He became an instructor at Harvard Medical School in 1904. From 1906 to 1909, Southard was an assistant pathologist at Danvers State Hospital. He was named assistant professor of psychology at Harvard University and Bullard Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard Medical School in 1909, titles which he held until his death. In that same year, he became pathologist to the Massachusetts Commission on Mental Diseases. He also assumed leadership of the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, which had opened as a department of the Boston State Hospital, from 1912 to his death.[9]

Southard served in a strategic advisory role with the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service during World War I, attaining the rank of major.[10] He was a past president of the American Medico-Psychological Association and was president of the Boston Society of Psychiatry and Neurology upon his death. Other professional memberships included the American Genetic Association, National Epilepsy Association, the American Association of Pathologists, the Massachusetts Medical Society and the Society of Experimental Biology. He served in an editorial capacity for several publications, including the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.[9]

Having coined the term cacogenics to describe the study of racial decline,[11] Southard served on the Board of Scientific Directors for the Eugenics Record Office (ERO).[12] Led by biologist Charles Davenport, the ERO lobbied for state sterilization laws and restrictions on U.S. immigration. Public approval of the office declined in the 1930s when eugenics became closely associated with Nazism, and the ERO closed in 1939.[13]

Professional contributions

Southard studied the organic bases of mental illness at a time when two camps of professionals (known informally as the "brain spot men" and the "mind twist men"[14]) debated biological and behavioral manifestations of psychiatric disorders. Southard's neuropathological perspective was eclipsed after his death by the growing dominance of "mind twist" or functional perspectives on mental illness promoted by the "dynamic psychiatry" or "psychobiology" of Adolf Meyer and the psychoanalytic perspectives of Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung and Alfred Adler. Additionally, physiological theories of "autointoxication" were explored in the pre-1940 era of US psychiatry, but Southard had long rejected these.[15]

Southard engaged in early studies of the phenomenon of shell shock in the World War I era. In the debate over whether shell shock resulted from physical or emotional causes, Southard found overlap between organic and functional ailments and preferred not to make distinctions between the two.[16] In Shell Shock and Other Neuropsychiatric Problems, he described the term "shell shock" as advantageous because it "compared with the more acutely terrible and life-in-the-balance thing we know as traumatic or surgical shock."[17] Indeed, once the condition was widely known to not result from physical forces, a stigma arose for patients, and arguments over its actual origins stood in the way of effective treatment.[17]

When World War I ended and Southard returned to Boston State Hospital, the hospital was reorganized. Southard was relieved of his director post at Boston Psychopathic and was named director one of its units, known as the Massachusetts Psychiatric Institute. The change took hospital administrative duties out of Southard's hands so that he could intensify his scientific research.[18] Southard had written a note in which he laid out several priorities for his scientific work. He said that he hoped to publish four books. The first work was to cover observations from his research laboratory that he had made between 1906 and 1919. He also planned a book on the clinical work he had done at Boston Psychopathic since 1912; he thought that such a work would increase the enthusiasm for hospitals of the same type. The third book would report on the expansion of psychiatric social work. The final work, a requirement of his academic post, would have been an overview of neuropathology.[19]

While he expressed a great deal of interest in research, Southard was most inclined to work on the classification, nomenclature and definition of psychiatric and philosophical concepts. Southard said that while he realized that many people ridiculed such work, he felt that a "psychiatric dictionary (to include definitions of every near-lying psychological and philosophical term also) would do more to push mental hygiene on than any other single thing I can think of."[19]

Southard was particularly interested in dementia praecox, which he favored renaming schizophrenia. He found diffuse anatomic differences in the brains of schizophrenic patients.[20] These changes were ignored or dismissed as artifactual by other investigators for several decades. Serious attention to Southard's findings did not reemerge in medical literature until the 1990s, and changes in diagnostic criteria complicate any comparison of Southard's findings to modern schizophrenic patients.[21] Shortly before his death, Southard wrote and presented Non-dementia non-praecox: note on the advantages to mental hygiene of extirpating a term. He did not have the opportunity to see it published.[20]

Southard and Mary Jarrett founded the field of psychiatric social work as they worked together to apply psychiatry to industrial employees. The Kingdom of Evils, a book on psychiatric social work co-authored by Southard and Jarrett, was published after his death.[22] In the introduction to the book, Dr. Richard Cabot wrote that the work highlights the collaboration between the doctor and the social worker. The physician excels at diagnosis, Cabot asserts, while the social worker is better able to provide resources for treatment.[23]

Influence

Southard and Myrtelle Canavan

While at Danvers State Hospital, Southard met Myrtelle Canavan, with whom he worked and published in neuropathology for the next several years. In 1912, he arrived at Boston Psychopathic Hospital, where Canavan had also taken a position. In 1914, Canavan received a tempting job offer from the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. In his capacity with the state mental health commission, Southard petitioned the board to create a position for Canavan as assistant to the pathologist. Canavan's new salary was enough for her to refuse the offer in Pennsylvania. After Southard's death, Canavan examined the brains of Southard and his parents. In 1925, she published Elmer Ernest Southard and His Parents: A Brain Study.[24] In 1931, Myrtelle Canavan identified a neurodegenerative disorder that became known as Canavan disease.[25]

Southard also mentored Karl Menninger during Menninger's internship at Boston Psychopathic Hospital. Menninger planned to join his father, general practitioner C. F. Menninger, in medical practice. Southard steered Karl Menninger's interests toward mental health, and the Menninger Foundation was later established with a focus on psychiatry. Karl Menninger later served as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. The Menninger family opened the Southard School, a teaching facility for mentally ill children, a few years after Southard's death.[26]

Southard had considerable influence on the early career of comparative psychologist Robert Yerkes. Yerkes held a half-time appointment at Boston Psychopathic Hospital with Southard from 1913 to 1917. Shortly thereafter, Yerkes was elected to the presidency of the American Psychological Association and developed the U.S. Army's mental testing program during World War I.[1] In his autobiography, Yerkes characterized Southard as "my master of psychopathology."[27]

Personal life

Horace Austin, former governor of Minnesota and Southard's father-in-law

In 1906, Southard married Dr. Mabel Fletcher Austin, a Wellesley College lecturer and the daughter of late Minnesota governor Horace Austin.[28] Southard once wrote to Gay about the limitations that his professional responsibilities had placed on the marriage. "Mabel is her own cook, maid and bath steward, as for her being a wife, I have little or no time to be a husband."[29]

Southard had three children: a daughter, Anne, and two sons. Southard's younger son, O. Mabson Southard (born Ordway Southard), became an early writer of English-language haiku[30] and was a Communist Party candidate in the 1942 Alabama gubernatorial race.[31] His older son Austin developed schizophrenia and died by suicide a few years after Southard's death.[30]

Southard's life was often characterized by a busy, sleepless pace. L. Vernon Briggs, a colleague at Boston Psychopathic Hospital, said that Southard considered himself to be hypomanic. "He himself said that most people fell within one of the classifications of mental disease, and he felt himself to be of the manic-depressive type. We seldom saw the depressive side of him though it was undoubtedly there; ordinarily he appeared carried away with enthusiasm about his latest interest – and everything worthwhile interested him."[32]

A member of two local chess clubs, his death notice in The New York Times described him as "one of the foremost amateur chess players in America".[9] He often arrived at his laboratory after spending all night awake playing chess. After his death, in "metaphors more appropriate for a comet than a man",[32] friends spoke of the intellect which allowed Southard to play up to six matches of "blind chess" simultaneously. He was also a member of the Wicht Club, a social and intellectual club of young Harvard academics.[33]

Death

Southard died after a brief bout with pneumonia at the Hotel Prince George in New York City on February 8, 1920. He was 43. Southard had traveled to New York the previous week to deliver medical society lectures.[9][34] In the description of the postmortem analysis of his brain, Canavan wrote that Southard had experienced "singular difficulties producing considerable mental discomfort"[32] in the last year of his life. She said that he sensed his impending death and felt pressure to complete his unfinished research tasks. Canavan quoted him as saying, "I shall not live long, I must hurry; I must get lots of others busy."[32]

Works

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Hilgard, Ernest (1965). Robert Mearns Yerkes, 1876—1956: A Biographical Memoir. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences. pp. 385–388.
  2. ↑ Gay, p. 15.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Gay, pp. 2-3.
  4. ↑ Gay, p. 28.
  5. ↑ Gay, p. 31.
  6. ↑ Gay, pp. 18-21.
  7. ↑ "Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Boston, 1893". 1893. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
  8. ↑ "The Chess Contest Ended". The New York Times. January 1, 1899. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 "Dr. E.E. Southard, Pneumonia Victim", The New York Times, February 9, 1920, retrieved June 1, 2012
  10. ↑ Mental Hygiene: Volume IV. New York: National Committee for Mental Hygiene. 1920. p. 680.
  11. ↑ Painter, Nell Irvin (2011). The History of White People. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 282. ISBN 039307949X. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
  12. ↑ The American Year Book. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1913. p. 396.
  13. ↑ "Eugenics Record Office". Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Retrieved February 10, 2013.
  14. ↑ Southard, EE (April 1914). "The mind twist and brain spot hypotheses in psychopathology and neuropathology". Psychological Bulletin 11 (4): 117–130. doi:10.1037/h0074668.
  15. ↑ Noll, Richard (2011). American Madness: The Rise and Fall of Dementia Praecox. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
  16. ↑ Winter, J. M. (2006). Remembering War: The Great War Between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century. Yale University Press. p. 68. ISBN 0300127529.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Jones, Edgar; Fear, Nicola; Wessely, Simon (November 1, 2007), "Shell Shock and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Historical Review", American Journal of Psychiatry 164 (11): 1641–1645, doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2007.07071180, PMID 17974926
  18. ↑ Briggs, Lloyd Vernon (1922). History of the Psychopathic Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. Wright & Potter. p. 151. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Gay, p. 284.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 "Classic Text No. 72 - Non-dementia non-praecox: note on the advantages to mental hygiene of extirpating a term (author manuscript)", History of Psychiatry 18 (4), 2007 [1919]: 483–502, doi:10.1177/0957154x07082895
  21. ↑ Heckers, Stephan (1997). "Neuropathology of Schizophrenia: Cortex, Thalamus, Basal Ganglia, and Neurotransmitter-Specific Projection Systems". Schizophrenia Bulletin 3 (3): 406. doi:10.1093/schbul/23.3.403. Retrieved February 27, 2013.
  22. ↑ Gabriel, JM (Fall 2005), "Mass-producing the individual: Mary C. Jarrett, Elmer E. Southard, and the industrial origins of psychiatric social work.", Bulletin of the History of Medicine 79 (3): 430–458, doi:10.1353/bhm.2005.0098, PMID 16184016
  23. ↑ Southard, E.E. and Mary Jarrett (1922). The Kingdom of Evils: Psychiatric Social Work Presented in One Hundred Case Histories. New York: The Macmillan Company. pp. x.
  24. ↑ "The Stethoscope Sorority: Stories from the Archives for Women in Medicine". Center for the History of Medicine. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  25. ↑ "History of Canavan". National Tay-Sachs and Allied Diseases Association. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  26. ↑ "Kansaspedia: Menninger Clinic". Kansas State Historical Society. December 2004. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  27. ↑ Murchison, Carl, ed. (1930), "Autobiography of Robert Mearns Yerkes", History of Psychology in Autobiography 2, Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, pp. 381–407
  28. ↑ "Personal". Boston Evening Transcript. June 28, 1906. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  29. ↑ Lunbeck, Elizabeth (1995). The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America. Princeton University Press. pp. 339–340. ISBN 0691025843. Retrieved February 14, 2015.
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 "Millikin University Haiku Writer Profile: O. Mabson Southard". Retrieved June 14, 2012.
  31. ↑ Winston, Rick (Winter–Spring 2012). ""A Sinister Poison": The Red Scare Comes to Bethel". Vermont History 80 (1): 74. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 32.3 Noll, Richard (2007). "Classic Text No. 72 - Introduction: Non-Dementia Non-Praecox: Note on the Advantages to Mental Hygiene of Extirpating a Term". History of Psychiatry 18 (4). doi:10.1177/0957154X07082895. Retrieved February 12, 2013.
  33. ↑ Langfeld, Herbert (1946), "Edwin Bissell Holt 1873 - 1946", Psychological Review 53: 251–258, doi:10.1037/h0060596
  34. ↑ Campbell, CM (November 1922), "Elmer Ernest Southard (1876-1920)", Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 57 (18): 516–518, JSTOR 20025962

References

Further reading

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