The Hospital Where Patients Became Experiments

This episode returns to the Montreal experiments, one of the most disturbing chapters connected to MKULTRA. At the Allan Memorial Institute, psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron used methods including drug-induced sleep, intensive electroshock, sensory deprivation, and repeated recorded messages, while CIA funding moved through secret channels. In under three minutes, the episode asks how a hospital, a place meant for care, became part of a hidden Cold War search for control.SourcesThe Canadian Encyclopedia states that experiments at Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute took place between 1957 and 1964, possibly beginning earlier, and were linked to CIA-funded MKULTRA research.A 2023 scholarly article in History of Psychiatry describes Cameron’s work from psychic driving to MKULTRA and notes research involving drugs, consciousness, and covert administration.The Guardian’s reporting on the Montreal experiments describes patients being subjected to electroshocks, drug-induced sleep, and large doses of LSD in the 1950s and 1960s.