The Nazi and the Psychiatrist Read Online Free

ingredients or efficacy of the pills, so he shipped a sample to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in Washington. Hoover passed it on to Nathan B. Eddy, PhD, a pioneer in the study of drug addiction at the Bureau of Narcotics Research of the US Public Health Department. Eddy’s analysis confirmed that the tablets contained not heart medicine but paracodeine, an effective painkiller and“a relatively rare narcotic, not used in the United States,” Hoover noted. The FBI deemed paracodeine’s addictive potential similar to that of morphine and warned Mondorf prison officials not to abruptly withdraw Göring from it.Hoover asked to be kept apprised of the Nazi’s recovery. (Göring was surely unaware of the FBI’s analysis, but he grasped Hoover’s interest in him when two FBI agents later came to Mondorf seeking a souvenir for the agency’s museum in Washington.“Imagine my being featured in the famous FBI museum with the gun of John Dillinger and the mask of Baby-Face Nelson,” Göring exclaimed. “It’s a fantastic idea!” He suddenly stopped, however, when he understood the implications of this request. “Aha, I’m already indicted. A notorious criminal. American children in the future will shudder when they see a souvenir of the vicious Reichsmarschall in the FBI collection.” Eventually the agents persuaded Göring to contribute one of his military epaulets.)
    Göring’s hoard of pills amounted to nearly the world’s entire supply of the synthetic drug, which he had requisitioned from German manufacturers. Developed by German pharmaceutical firms four decades earlier, paracodeine is a depressant with an active ingredient chemically related to the one in opium.“Paracodeine fills a gap between the codeine and morphine groups [of drugs],” noted a German pharmaceutical journal of the early twentieth century. “When paracodeine is given, like codeine, insmall doses, it often acts with more intensity than codeine. Compared with codeine, the remedy has a greater sedative power.”
    Göring was addicted, and to satisfy his need he had pharmacists formulate low-dosage tablets especially for his use. Each tablet contained ten milligrams of the drug, with five tablets delivering the narcotic effect of sixty-five milligrams of morphine, more than enough to anesthetize an average person. At the war’s conclusion, Göring often punctuated work and meetings with breaks so he could pop these pills.
    Andrus would not tolerate his prison housing an addict. On May 26, Göring’s sixth day at Mondorf, Andrus ordered the prison’s medical staff —a German doctor named Ludwig Pflücker and the American physician William “Clint” Miller—to wean the prisoner off paracodeine. They began by reducing Göring’s daily allotment of pills to thirty-eight, then to eighteen on May 29. An anxious Göring began counting the pills he received and “showed he was disgusted and otherwise showed no effects,” Andrus wrote in prison records. Two days later, however, Göring came down with bronchitis, and the Mondorf staff temporarily stopped the withdrawal process. “In my opinion, further reduction in the size of the dosage, or complete withdrawal of the medicine would produce an extremely serious mental and physical reaction in this individual,” Miller reported to Andrus. Several weeks would pass before anyone had the resolve to continue Göring’s recovery.

    With Göring’s withdrawal still unfinished, a new staff member arrived at Mondorf in early August. He had been ordered to Mondorf from the US Army’s 130th General Hospital of the European Theater of Operations, where he worked as a consulting psychiatrist and was in charge of psychiatric services provided to thousands of US soldiers.
    Boyish in appearance, solidly built, and ruggedly handsome, with brown, wavy hair, the new arrival was Captain Douglas McGlashan Kelley, a California-born physician. He was near the end of three years in the medical service of the US