Fonds MG 1098 - Donald Ewen Cameron Fonds

D. Ewen Cameron was born in Scotland and received his medical degree from the University of Glasgow in 1924. He began his career as resident surgeon at Glasgow Infirmary. In 1929, Cameron came to Canada to work in the Brandon Mental Hospital. In 1936, he became Director of Research at Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts, and in 1938 was appointed Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Albany State Medical School. At Albany, Cameron was known for research on sensory deprivation, memory and aging. In 1943, he was appointed Professor of Psychiatry at McGill and director of the newly-created Allan Memorial Institute. On the clinical side, he established in-patient and out-patient services and introduced the practice of a day hospital. He developed laboratories for psychiatric research and established psychiatric training in undergraduate curricula and teaching hospital programmes. In 1945, Cameron was appointed to the American panel to examine Rudolf Hess at the Nuremberg trials. Cameron’s time at the Allen Memorial Institution is today widely recognized for the unethical medical experimentation that Cameron oversaw, as well as the development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the US Central Intelligence Agency, known as the “Montreal experiments.” After retiring from the Allan Memorial Institute in 1964, Cameron returned to Albany as Research Professor at the Albany Medical School and Director of the Laboratory for Research in Psychiatry and Aging at the Veterans' Administration Hospital.