Robert Foster Kennedy

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Robert Foster Kennedy

Robert Foster Kennedy (born February 7, 1884 in Belfast , † January 7, 1952 ) was an Irish-American neurologist .

biography

He completed his medical degree at the Royal University of Ireland , Dublin . After graduating in 1906, he worked at the National Hospital, Queen's Square, where his work was influenced by medical greats such as Sir William Gowers , John Hughlings Jackson , Sir Victor Horsley and Sir Henry Head .

In 1910 Kennedy was invited to the newly established Neurological Institute in New York . During World War I he returned to Europe and served first in a French field hospital and then in a British unit. While working on the front lines, he escaped wounding several times and was knighted in France to the Légion d'Honneur . On June 3, 1912, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

He then worked at Bellevue Hospital in New York, among others with Samuel Alexander Kinnier Wilson . Foster Kennedy became professor of neurology at Cornell University and became president of the American Neurological Association in 1940 .

Kennedy was a eugenicist and a proponent of forced sterilization and the murder of disabled children.

He was one of the first to use electroconvulsive therapy in the treatment of psychoses and showed that war neuroses are a form of mass hysteria . He saw the cause of the disease in the soldier's inner conflict between the instinct for self-preservation and the instinct for herd .

Foster Kennedy Syndrome , named after him, was described by him in 1911.

Works

  • R. Foster Kennedy: Epilepsy and the Convulsive State. Baltimore, Williams & Wilkins Company, 1931
  • F. Kennedy, AM Frantz, CC Hare, eds. The Inter-Relationship of Mind and Body (Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease Research Publications, Vol 19). Baltimore, Williams & Wilkins 1939

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ LD Stevenson: R. Foster Kennedy, MD, 1884-1952 . In: Neurology . tape 2 , 1952, pp. 360-362 .
  2. ^ C. Rupp: Robert Foster Kennedy (obituary) . In: Trans Am Neurol Ass . tape 77 , 1952, pp. 276-277 .
  3. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 26, 2019 .
  4. ^ F. Kennedy: Sterilization and eugenics. In: J Obstetr Gynecol . tape 34 , 1937, pp. 519-520 .
  5. ^ F. Kennedy: The problem of social control of the congenital defective: education, sterilization, euthanasia. In: Am J Psychiatry . tape 99 , 1942, pp. 13-16 .
  6. ^ RD Strous: Psychiatry during the Nazi era: ethical lessons for the modern professional. In: Ann Gen Psychiatry . tape 6 , 2007, p. 8 .
  7. ^ Foster Kennedy: Retrobulbar neuritis as an exact diagnostic sign of certain tumors and abscesses in the frontal lobe. In: Am J Med Sci Vol. 142, No. 3, 1911, ISSN 0002-9629, pp. 355-368 . 142, No. 3, 1911, pp. 355-368 .
personal data
SURNAME Kennedy, Robert Foster
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kennedy, R. Foster; Kennedy, Foster
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish-American neurologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Belfast
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 1952