Dr. Brooklyn believed that localized infections were the root causes of insanity. After he became the head of an insane asylum in Trenton in 1907, he began implementing a procedure he dubbed “surgical bacteriology.” During that time, Cotton and his team performed thousands of surgical operations on patients, often without their consent. First, they extracted teeth and tonsils; if that wasn’t enough, they would go deeper and remove the internal organs which they believed were causing the problems. He believed in his methods so much that he even performed them on himself and his family. He extracted teeth from himself, his wife, and his two sons (one of whom also had part of his colon removed).
Cotton claimed that his treatments had a high rate of curing patients, and that claim soon became a lightning rod for critics who found his work appalling. In one instance, he justified the deaths of 49 patients from the colectomies and stated that they were already suffering from “end-stage psychosis” prior to the operations. An independent investigation later revealed that Cotton greatly exaggerated the results. After his death in 1933, the surgeries at the asylum ceased and Cotton’s viewpoints faded into obscurity. To his credit, critics ruled that he really was sincere in his efforts to cure his patients, albeit in an insane, deluded way
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