The Sleep Room by Jon Stock review – haunting accounts of horrific medical abuse | Science and nature books
A child of 14 is forced to walk on to a stage and strip to her underwear. Tiny and mute beneath the stacked rows of medical students, she is paraded for their benefit by a consultant psychiatrist some 44 years her senior. It is 1966 – the peak of Swinging 60s’ hedonism, liberalism and youthful counterculture – but in a locked psychiatric ward in London’s Royal Waterloo hospital, unspeakable violations are being inflicted upon patients.
The perpetrator-in-chief, William Sargant, is the subject of thriller writer Jon Stock’s first nonfiction book, The Sleep Room: A Very British Medical Scandal. One of the most notorious figures in British psychiatry, Sargant initially wished to be a physician. He pivoted to psychiatry after one…
