I swear by Apollo: Dr. Ewen Cameron and the CIA-brainwashing experiments

by Don Gillmor

Interesting book.

188 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Author and journalist Don Gillmor was born in Fort Frances, Ontario in 1959 and presently lives in Toronto, Ontario. Don possesses a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Calgary. He has worked for publisher John Wiley & Sons, and has written for a number of magazines including Rolling Stone, GQ, Premiere, and Saturday Night.; where he was made a contributing editor in 1989.

Reviews

[Jon]

This is a fine work of investigative history about Scottish sadist Dr. Ewen Cameron and his Cold War-era psychological-torture experiments, largely funded by the CIA, that--with very few exceptions--tended to make the patients nuttier than they were to begin with. Gillmor is especially good on the history of medicine, and specifically psychiatry, in Montreal (where Cameron did his dirty work) and Canada in general, and the slow-to-fade influence of the Catholic Church on medical practice in that country. While Anne Collins' IN THE SLEEP ROOM focuses more on Cameron's patients, Gillmor concentrates more on the madman of McGill and his career. Both books complement each other, and both are better than Gordon Thomas' JOURNEY INTO MADNESS, one of the first books to deal with these events, which was shown by H. P. Albarelli in his book, A TERRIBLE MISTAKE, to contain factual errors. Depressing indeed, but a useful examination of medical--and government--malfeasance.

[Mélina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un documentaire portant sur les traitements des patients de l'Hôpital Allan Memorial. C'est affreux de voir comment les gens ont été traités comme des animaux. Un livre pertinent pour quiconque s'intéresse à l'histoire du Dr. Cameron et de ses expériences.