William S. Sadler - Career

Career

By 1912, Sadler and his wife, both doctors by then, operated a joint practice in Chicago that catered to children's and women's health issues. Sadler initially focused on surgery, performing surgeries with his wife, but widened his practice to include psychiatric counseling in 1930 and became a consulting psychiatrist at Columbus Hospital. As a psychiatrist, Sadler advocated an eclectic mix of techniques, applying the theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Adolf Meyer. Sadler believed that religious faith was beneficial to mental health, and specifically promoted prayer, which he believed to be most effective in the context of Christian faith. However, he thought that religious beliefs were deleterious to mental health if based on fear.

Sadler and his wife moved into an Art Nouveau-style house—the first steel-frame residence in Chicago—on Diversey Parkway in 1912. The couple operated their medical practice in the building, and Sadler served as a professor of psychiatry at the Post-Graduate Medical School of Chicago. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of medical associations including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Pathological Society, and the American College of Surgeons. Sadler was also a member of the faculty of McCormick Theological Seminary, and taught pastoral psychology. He argued that pastors should be educated in basic psychiatry so they could recognize symptoms of mental illness in congregants. His students later recalled him as an engaging and humorous public speaker.

Sadler wrote about many topics. In 1909, he published his first book, an evangelical work, titled Self-Winning Texts, or Bible Helps for Personal Work. In the 1910s, he regularly worked all night on his writing projects. In addition to 42 books, most of which were about personal health issues, he wrote magazine articles. Many of Sadler's books focused on popular self-help topics; historian Jonathan Spiro deems Sadler's The Elements of Pep a "quintessential book of the 1920s". In 1936, Sadler published Theory and Practice of Psychiatry, a 1,200-page work in which he attempted to provide a comprehensive outline of psychiatry.

Sadler also wrote about race: he had an interest in eugenics, likely owing to Kellogg's interest in the concept, and Madison Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race. Sadler wrote several works about eugenics, endorsing and heavily borrowing from Grant's views, which posited that the "Nordic race" was superior to others. In his writings, Sadler contended that some races were at a lower stage of evolution—closer to Neanderthals than were other races—and were consequently less civilized and more aggressive. Sadler argued that alcoholism and "feeblemindedness, insanity, and delinquency" were hereditary traits and that those who possessed them were breeding at a much faster rate than "superior human beings". He feared that this issue could threaten the "civilization we bequeath our descendants". He also believed that the majority of criminals were mentally ill.

In 1907, Sadler began giving lectures on the Chautauqua adult-education circuit, which featured itinerant speakers discussing self-help and morality. Sadler often spoke about attaining physical and mental health without drugs. He also promoted hydrotherapy and discussed moral issues that related to men. Sadler, his wife, her sister, and a friend, formed a four-member lecture company that gave two- or three-day engagements, sometimes accompanied by an orchestra. Newspapers published favorable reviews of the productions. The lectures proved to be a lucrative endeavor: it was rumored that he became one of the best-paid Chautauqua speakers.

Sadler believed that mediums were a source of false comfort and, after World War I ended, fought against the increased popularity of communication with the dead. In the 1910s and 1920s, attempting to expose purported clairvoyants became one of Sadler's favorite pastimes and he regularly worked with a Northwestern University psychologist and Howard Thurston, then a prominent magician, while investigating psychics. Sadler may have met the magician Harry Houdini (who was also a skeptic) around this time.