Barnwood House Hospital - "All The Most Modern Methods of Treatment"

"All The Most Modern Methods of Treatment"

An association with the Burden Neurological Institute from 1939 meant that Barnwood House patients were used in early experiments with electroconvulsive therapy and psychosurgery. William Ross Ashby, psychiatrist and pioneer of cybernetics, built his "Homeostat" machine in a laboratory at Barnwood House in the 1950s.

The Burden Neurological Institute opened in Stoke Gifford, near Bristol, Gloucestershire, in 1939 and formed links with Barnwood Hospital. The first published report on the use of electroconvulsive therapy on patients in England was a collaboration between Gerald Fleming, the medical superintendent of Barnwood House and editor of the Journal of Mental Science, and Frederic Golla and William Grey Walter from the Burden Neurological Institute. German psychiatrist Lothar Kalinowsky had witnessed ECT in Italy and demonstrated it at the Burden Neurological Institute; five patients at Barnwood House were selected as guinea pigs for the new form of convulsive therapy.

"We selected five psychotics for treatment at Barnwood House. Altogether 75 shocks have been administered, as a result of which there have been 50 major convulsions and 25 minor attacks. There have been no unpleasant sequelae, and none of the patients has refused further treatments. This small preliminary series was not intended to provide data on the therapeutic value of the treatment – in only one of the patients could a remission be hoped for with any confidence – but was designed to throw light on the relative advantages and dangers of the method."

The advantages were immediately apparent:

"For the operator, only a small amount of training and experience is necessary, and a knowledge of physics, though desirable on general grounds, is not essential….the apparatus is comparatively cheap and portable, and preparation of the patient need take no more than a minute."

Four certified patients at Barnwood House were also amongst the first in England to undergo prefrontal leucotomy, again as a result of a collaboration between Barnwood and the Burden Neurological Institute. The operations were performed in April 1941 by surgeon Francis Wilfred Willway with a paperknife. None of the first four Barnwood House patients left hospital after the operation, but were described as more manageable and well behaved. Barnwood House then employed the services of neurosurgeon Wylie McKissock to continue the leucotomy programme.

William Ross Ashby, pioneer of cybernetics, was director of research at Barnwood House from 1947–1959, before becoming director of research at BNI and then professor of Biophysics and Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA. Whilst at Barnwood House he wrote Design for a Brain and Introduction to Cybernetics, and constructed a black box with magnets which he called the Homeostat, "the closest thing to a synthetic brain so far designed by man".

From 1948 to 1962 Barnwood House advertised its services in the Journal of Mental Science with the following words:

"A REGISTERED HOSPITAL (outside the National Health Service) for the CARE and TREATMENT of LADIES and GENTLEMEN suffering from NERVOUS and MENTAL DISORDERS. Within two miles of the Western and London Midland Regional Railway Stations at Gloucester, the Hospital is easily accessible by rail from London and all parts of the United Kingdom. It is beautifully situated at the foot of the Cotswold Hills, and stands in its own grounds of over 300 acres . Voluntary Patients of both sexes are also received for treatment. Special accommodation is also provided at three villa residences, all of which stand in their own grounds and are entirely separate from the main Hospital. All the most modern methods of treatment including electric shock and prefrontal leucotomy are used."

But the "most modern methods of treatment" were losing their allure by the 1960s and, in spite of a new advertisement appearing in 1963 with no mention of ladies and gentleman, or leucotomy and electric shock, and the railway stations replaced by the A417, Barnwood House experienced financial difficulties and closed in 1968.