The McGill experience of Robert A. Cleghorn, MD: recollections of D. Ewen Cameron.

Note. In the past decade, the career of Dr. D. Ewen Cameron (1901-67), particularly his work at McGill in the 1950s and early 1960s, has attracted much attention. At least three books have been published about Cameron's controversial practices,' now thoroughly discredited, of using various so-called depatterning techniques, including LSD, in investigating schizophrenia and in attempting to treat patients who had that disorder. These techniques are described in detail in the following pages. In 1988, the clandestine role of the American CIA in funding some of this research achieved notoriety when the CIA agreed to make a large cash settlement with several former patients seeking to bring suit against this government agency. Coincidentally, in 1988 a copy of the unpublished autobiography of Dr. Robert A. Cleghorn came to my attention. Cleghorn, now living in semiretirement in Toronto, was at McGill and its Allan Memorial Institute throughout the years of the controversial work, and he succeeded Cameron as Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry there. The entire document is most interesting and will, I hope, be published one day. But the portions of the memoirs devoted to Cameron seemed especially relevant, offering as they do the cool reflections and insight of a highly interested bystander who was closely connected with Cameron. With the permission and cooperation of Dr. Cleghorn, a substantial portion of his memoirs has been excerpted. It is published here as a contribution to our understanding of what is certain to remain an emotional fragment of Canadian I medical and ethical history for years to come. Omissions from the text are indicated in the usual way. Otherwise, the following recollections are as written by Cleghorn. Copies of the entire autobiography, under the title A Search for Meaning in Hormones and Humans, are available in several of the Canadian university library systems, including McGill University, McMaster University and the University of Toronto. -Charles G. Roland