Karl Bowman
Encyclopedia
Karl Murdock Bowman, MD (November 4, 1888 – March 2, 1973) was a pioneer in the study of psychiatry
. From 1944 to 1946 he was the president of the American Psychiatric Association
. His work in alcoholism
, schizophrenia
, and homosexuality
is particularly often cited.
, and graduated from Washburn University. His nickname in college was "Tommy," according to the school's 1910 yearbook. While at Washburn, he was a member and president of the Delta Phi Fraternity, forerunner of the Kansas Beta Chapter of Phi Delta Theta Fraternity
. Bowman was initiated into Phi Delta Theta
with the chapter’s founding fathers on October 1, 1910. In 1913, he graduated from medical school at the University of California, Berkeley
with his M.D.
Bowman was married to the former Eliza Abbot Stearns. Together they had four sons, Dr. Walter M. Bowman, Dr. Thomas E. Bowman, Dr. Murdock S. Bowman, and Professor Richard S. Bowman, and 13 grandchildren.
During World War I
, Bowman was a captain in the Army Medical Corps
from 1917 to 1919.
. He testified at the trials of Nathan F. Leopold
and Richard Loeb for the murder of Robert Franks in 1924 as well as in many other celebrated cases.
During his career, Bowman was the chief medical officer at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital
; an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
(1921–1936); the chief of psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital (1936–1941); a professor of psychiatry at New York University Medical College (1936–1941); the first chairman and director of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute
(1941–1956); and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was also the head of the Laguna Honda Psychiatric Hospital
in San Francisco (1941–1967)
As the retiring president of the American Psychiatric Association in 1946, he made headlines when he predicted that 10 million people in the United States would at some time in their lives require hospitalization for mental disorders. Bowman was also a board member of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
.
) asked him to participate in an alcoholism study he had been preparing. Bowman was interested in this project but wished to have a part in leading the study. In 1938, Bowman joined the Moore Group. This group founded the "Research Council on Problems of Alcohol" or the RCPA, which was an organization similar to Alcoholics Anonymous
. Soon after it was created, Bowman became a leader of this organization. With E. Morton Jellinek
, he co-wrote an influential 1941 article, "Alcohol Addiction and Its Treatment," synthesizing prior typologies of alcoholism and classifying alcoholics into four types, which was the basis of Jellinek's later five-stage typology. He also researched and wrote on marijuana.
in New York on February 17, 1939. During his reading, Bowman stated, "over one half of the population of State Hospitals" consisted of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia
. He claimed that this psychological disorder did not shorten the lifespan of the patient, but resulted in the deterioration of the patient's brain. In his article, Bowman addresses many different methods that were used throughout history to help treat schizophrenia. For example, fever therapy consisted of inducing a fever in the patient using various methods, such as the malaria virus, but did not produce effective results in the treatment of schizophrenia. Sleep therapy was carried out using sleep-inducing substances such as marijuana, opium
, and somnifen. Bowman also addresses stimulus therapy; this method had only temporary effects. Bowman recommended the insulin method as effective, with longer-lasting effects and more indications of long-term improvement. Bowman was optimistic about schizophrenia patients whose conditions had improved or had been cured and also about future treatment methods for schizophrenia patients.
presenting the viewpoint that homosexuality is not a mental illness and should be legalized.
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
. From 1944 to 1946 he was the president of the American Psychiatric Association
American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the most influential worldwide. Its some 38,000 members are mainly American but some are international...
. His work in alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
, and homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
is particularly often cited.
Family and Education
Bowman was born in Topeka, KansasTopeka, Kansas
Topeka |Kansa]]: Tó Pee Kuh) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is situated along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...
, and graduated from Washburn University. His nickname in college was "Tommy," according to the school's 1910 yearbook. While at Washburn, he was a member and president of the Delta Phi Fraternity, forerunner of the Kansas Beta Chapter of Phi Delta Theta Fraternity
Phi Delta Theta
Phi Delta Theta , also known as Phi Delt, is an international fraternity founded at Miami University in 1848 and headquartered in Oxford, Ohio. Phi Delta Theta, Beta Theta Pi, and Sigma Chi form the Miami Triad. The fraternity has about 169 active chapters and colonies in over 43 U.S...
. Bowman was initiated into Phi Delta Theta
Phi Delta Theta
Phi Delta Theta , also known as Phi Delt, is an international fraternity founded at Miami University in 1848 and headquartered in Oxford, Ohio. Phi Delta Theta, Beta Theta Pi, and Sigma Chi form the Miami Triad. The fraternity has about 169 active chapters and colonies in over 43 U.S...
with the chapter’s founding fathers on October 1, 1910. In 1913, he graduated from medical school at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
with his M.D.
Bowman was married to the former Eliza Abbot Stearns. Together they had four sons, Dr. Walter M. Bowman, Dr. Thomas E. Bowman, Dr. Murdock S. Bowman, and Professor Richard S. Bowman, and 13 grandchildren.
During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Bowman was a captain in the Army Medical Corps
Medical Corps (United States Army)
The Medical Corps of the U.S. Army is a staff corps of the U.S. Army Medical Department consisting of commissioned medical officers – physicians with either an MD or a DO degree, at least one year of post-graduate clinical training, and a state medical license.The MC traces its earliest origins...
from 1917 to 1919.
Psychiatric Work
In the course of his career, Bowman conducted pioneering work on the psychiatric effects of alcohol, drugs, and sexuality. He also conducted research on schizophrenia and the use of insulin shock therapyInsulin shock therapy
Insulin shock therapy or insulin coma therapy was a form of psychiatric treatment in which patients were repeatedly injected with large doses of insulin in order to produce daily comas over several weeks...
. He testified at the trials of Nathan F. Leopold
Leopold and Loeb
Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr. and Richard Albert Loeb , more commonly known as "Leopold and Loeb", were two wealthy University of Michigan alumni and University of Chicago students who murdered 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks in 1924 and were sentenced to life imprisonment.The duo were...
and Richard Loeb for the murder of Robert Franks in 1924 as well as in many other celebrated cases.
During his career, Bowman was the chief medical officer at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital
Boston Psychopathic Hospital
The Boston Psychopathic Hospital was the first mental health hospital in Massachusetts, USA.-History of the establishment:In November 1909 the site for the hospital was purchased on Fenwood Road, 5 minutes' walk from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Elmer E. Southard was appointed director of the...
; an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
(1921–1936); the chief of psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital (1936–1941); a professor of psychiatry at New York University Medical College (1936–1941); the first chairman and director of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute
Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute
The Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute is part of the Psychiatry Department at UCSF, one of the most highly regarded medical universities in the United States. Langley Porter is the oldest facility in the Psychiatry Department, and was the first psychiatric institute in California.It was...
(1941–1956); and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was also the head of the Laguna Honda Psychiatric Hospital
Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center
Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center is a city-owned acute care hospital providing long term care and rehabilitation services to seniors and adults with disabilities in San Francisco, CA.- Service population :...
in San Francisco (1941–1967)
As the retiring president of the American Psychiatric Association in 1946, he made headlines when he predicted that 10 million people in the United States would at some time in their lives require hospitalization for mental disorders. Bowman was also a board member of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
The American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, Inc. is a nonprofit corporation that was founded in 1934 following conferences of committees appointed by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Neurological Association, and the then Section on Nervous and Mental Diseases of the American...
.
Alcoholism
Bowman was Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital in New York City when Dr. Allen Gregg (Director of the Rockefeller FoundationRockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
) asked him to participate in an alcoholism study he had been preparing. Bowman was interested in this project but wished to have a part in leading the study. In 1938, Bowman joined the Moore Group. This group founded the "Research Council on Problems of Alcohol" or the RCPA, which was an organization similar to Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous is an international mutual aid movement which says its "primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety." Now claiming more than 2 million members, AA was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio...
. Soon after it was created, Bowman became a leader of this organization. With E. Morton Jellinek
E. Morton Jellinek
Elvin Morton "Bunky" Jellinek , E. Morton Jellinek, or most often, E. M. Jellinek, was a biostatistician, physiologist, and an alcoholism researcher. He was born in New York City and died at the desk of his study at Stanford University on 22 October 1963. He was fluent in nine languages and could...
, he co-wrote an influential 1941 article, "Alcohol Addiction and Its Treatment," synthesizing prior typologies of alcoholism and classifying alcoholics into four types, which was the basis of Jellinek's later five-stage typology. He also researched and wrote on marijuana.
Schizophrenia
Karl Bowman read his article "The Modern Treatment of Schizophrenia" at the New York Academy of MedicineNew York Academy of Medicine
The New York Academy of Medicine was founded in 1847 by a group of leading New York City metropolitan area physicians as a voice for the medical profession in medical practice and public health reform...
in New York on February 17, 1939. During his reading, Bowman stated, "over one half of the population of State Hospitals" consisted of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
. He claimed that this psychological disorder did not shorten the lifespan of the patient, but resulted in the deterioration of the patient's brain. In his article, Bowman addresses many different methods that were used throughout history to help treat schizophrenia. For example, fever therapy consisted of inducing a fever in the patient using various methods, such as the malaria virus, but did not produce effective results in the treatment of schizophrenia. Sleep therapy was carried out using sleep-inducing substances such as marijuana, opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
, and somnifen. Bowman also addresses stimulus therapy; this method had only temporary effects. Bowman recommended the insulin method as effective, with longer-lasting effects and more indications of long-term improvement. Bowman was optimistic about schizophrenia patients whose conditions had improved or had been cured and also about future treatment methods for schizophrenia patients.
Homosexuality
During the 1950s and 1960s, Bowman collaborated in a number of studies on homosexuality and wrote a report on it for the State of California. In 1953, in "The Problem of Homosexuality," co-authored with Bernice Engle, he argued for multiple causes, including genetics, but proposed that castration be studied as a cure. However in 1961 he appeared in the television documentary The RejectedThe Rejected
The Rejected is a documentary film about homosexuality, produced for KQED in San Francisco by John W. Reavis,The Rejected was the first documentary program on homosexuality broadcast on American television. It initially ran on September 11, 1961, and was later syndicated to National Educational...
presenting the viewpoint that homosexuality is not a mental illness and should be legalized.
Books
- Personal Problems for Men and Women. New York: Greenberg, 1931. OCLC 1114346. Repr. as Towards Peace of Mind: Everyday Problems of Mental Health. London: Unwin, 1936. OCLC 2475650
- Final report on California sexual deviation research: March, 1954. Sacramento: State of California, 1954.
- My years in psychiatry, 1915-1968: an interview with Karl M. Bowman, M.D., San Francisco, February 27 and 28, 1968. California State Department of Mental Hygiene. Sacramento: State of California, 1969. OCLC 58860757
Articles
- "Factors Determining the Development of Natural and Unnatural Habit Movements." Dental Cosmos 70.1, January 1928. pp. 35–44
- "Practical Clinical Psychiatry for Students and Practitioners." American Journal of Public Health 21.9, September 1931. pp. 1074–75
- "The Sciences of Man in the Making: An Orientation Book." American Journal of Public Health 23.4, April 1933. p. 391
- "Modern Treatment of Schizophrenia." Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 15.5, May 1939. pp. 338–53. PubMed 1911385
- with Walter Goldfarb, Sam Parker, B. Krautman. "The Treatment of Acute Alcoholism with Glucose and Insulin." Journal of Clinical Investigation 18.5, September 1939. pp. 581–84
- "Liquor, Servant of Man." American Journal of Public Health 30.3 (1940) 296
- with Samuel Allentuck. "The Psychiatric Aspects of Marihuana Intoxication." American Journal of Psychiatry 99 (1942) 248–51. Online at UKCIA.org.
- with E. Morton JellinekE. Morton JellinekElvin Morton "Bunky" Jellinek , E. Morton Jellinek, or most often, E. M. Jellinek, was a biostatistician, physiologist, and an alcoholism researcher. He was born in New York City and died at the desk of his study at Stanford University on 22 October 1963. He was fluent in nine languages and could...
. "Alcohol Addiction and Its Treatment." Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 2 (1941) 98–176. pdf at University of Wisconsin. Reprinted in Alcohol Addiction and Chronic Alcoholism. Effects of Alcohol on the Individual: A Critical Exposition of Present Knowledge volume 1. Ed. E. Morton Jellinek. Research Council on Problems of Alcohol, Scientific Committee. New Haven, Connecticut / London: Oxford, 1942. OCLC 63622529 - "Psychiatric Aspects of Marihuana Intoxication." Journal of the American Medical AssociationJournal of the American Medical AssociationThe Journal of the American Medical Association is a weekly, peer-reviewed, medical journal, published by the American Medical Association. Beginning in July 2011, the editor in chief will be Howard C. Bauchner, vice chairman of pediatrics at Boston University’s School of Medicine, replacing ...
125.5 (1944) pp. 376. doi: 10.1001/jama.1944.02850230056022 - with Jurgen Ruesch. "Prolonged Post-Traumatic Syndromes Following Head Injury." American Journal of Psychiatry 102.2, September 1945. 145–63. abstract
- with Bernice Engle. "The Problem of Homosexuality." Journal of Social Hygiene 39.1 (1953) 3–16.
- with Gene Gordon. "The Auxiliary Treatment of Psychotic Women—Group Therapy for Their Husbands." California Medicine 78.4, April 1953. pp. 303–08
- with Bernice Engle. "A Psychiatric Evaluation of Laws of Homosexuality". Temple Law Quarterly 29.3, Spring 1956. pp. 273–326.
- "Too Many Sex Laws." In Henry M. Christman, ed. A View of the Nation: An Anthology, 1955–1959. New York: Grove, 1960. Repr. Essay index reprint series. Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries, 1970. ISBN 9780836916201. pp. 146&51.
External links
- Works by Karl M. Bowman at OCLC WorldCat