Famous Evil Doctors

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We expect Doctors to care for us when we are ill, we expect them to diagnose our illnesses and explain a course of treatment that will work for us ‘ this might or might not include prescription drugs. But what happens when those who have ‘Doctor’ as a title do the opposite? What happens when those to whom we entrust our care deliberately set out to harm us? This is a gross betrayal of trust and here are ten of the most horrific examples

1. Doctor Harvey Crippen

Doctor Harvey Crippen
Doctor Harvey Crippen

Though not an actual Doctor – he was a homeopath and therefore not legally permitted to call himself a Doctor in the UK where he migrated to (he was American birth). Crippen earned himself the reputation of an evil Doctor after killing his second wife. His first wife died of a stroke and after remarrying, he took a young woman as his lover. When his second wife went missing, he claimed she had returned to California but it turned out that she had been killed and buried under the floorboards of their London home. Crippen was found guilty and hanged; Le Neve was charged as an accessory but acquitted.

2. Doctor Josef Mengele

Doctor Josef Mengele
Doctor Josef Mengele

Mengele was nicknamed ‘Angel of Death’ and not without good reason. As the chief scientist at Auschwitz, he conducted many horrific experiments. He would take sets of twins, kill them and then cut them open to see if they looked different inside. It was also his call on which workers inside the camp were fit enough to work and which could be sent to the gas chamber. He sterilised women and attempted amputating and reattaching the severed limbs to see if they were still functioning.

3. Doctor Harold Shipman

Doctor Harold Shipman
Doctor Harold Shipman

Not only is Shipman the only British qualified Doctor to be convicted of murder, it is highly likely that he is now the world’s most prolific serial killer. Convicted of murdering 218 people, due to the number of patients in his care who died, the actual number of victims could be double that. Over the years, authorities started to notice a large number of deaths in his care ‘ death certificates countersigned by Shipman were unusually high. He also seemed the beneficiary of many wills. Convicted in 2000, he spent four years in jail before committing suicide.

4. Doctor Herman Mudgett

Doctor Herman Mudgett
Doctor Herman Mudgett

America’s first serial killer was actually a qualified Doctor. Similarly to Harold Shipman above, he would kill rather than heal those in his care ‘ but not before having them sign over everything they owned to him in their wills. He used the purchase of a hotel to mask his grizzly experiments. Once he chose a victim, he would kill them, perform bizarre experiments on their bodies and then strip them of their flesh before selling their complete bodies or body parts to researchers. He was hanged in 1896

5. Arnfinn Nesset

Arnfinn Nesset
Arnfinn Nesset

Though not a Doctor because he did not finish his qualification before being caught, Nesset was charged and convicted of killing 22 patients. In each case he had injected them with a muscle relaxant called Curacit. He also knew that it breaks down in the body very quickly and if not discovered in time, is untraceable. He was convicted and spent 21 years in a Norwegian jail (the maximum sentence under Norwegian law). He was released in 2004 and was given a new identity.

6. Doctor Carl Carlberg

Doctor Carl Carlberg
Doctor Carl Carlberg

His qualification was in gynaecology but chose to put that to nefarious uses. If Mengele focused on a broad spectrum of ‘experiments’ then Carlberg quickly found a niche in Auschwitz looking at ways to sterilise women. Himmler permitted him to indulge in the experiments using his own block of camp prisoners. He sterilised in the region of 300 women ‘ mostly using acid which he injected directly into the uterus. Their ovaries were then removed and sent to Berlin for further research into sterilisation. After the war he died before being tried for war crimes

7. John Bodkin Adams

John Bodkin Adams
John Bodkin Adams

This tale of an Irish GP is remarkably similar to Harold Shipman above. Over a ten year period in the 1940s and 1950s, some 160 of his patients died in mysterious circumstances ‘ 132 of whom had left him something in their will. He was charged with one count of murder but acquitted; in a second cast the trial was thrown out due to discrepancies with the presiding judge. He was eventually convicted of prescription fraud, obstructing the police and failing to keep a Dangerous Drugs Register. He was struck off by the NHS but never convicted of murder

8. Grigory Mairanovsky

Grigory Mairanovsky
Grigory Mairanovsky

The early years of the Soviet era in Russia saw inhuman experiments ‘ many echoing the Nazi studies that preceded or were contemporary with them. Under the rule of Stalin, Grigory Mairanovsky was in charge of secret labs in Moscow. He conducted many experiments on political prisoners and his speciality was in poisons. Most horrifyingly, his PhD thesis had the title “Biological activity of the products of interaction of mustard gas with [human] skin tissues”. He spent ten years in jail after suspicion of involvement in The Doctors’ Plot’.

9. Michael Swango

Michael Swango
Michael Swango

A former registered Doctor, Swango was convicted of four poisonings but could have been responsible as many as 60 during his period of study and practice. He is said to have developed a fascinating for dying patients while training to be a MD. Authorities were alarmed when otherwise healthy patients in his care would suddenly die. He was eventually caught when he moved away and attempted to poison an EMT.

10. Shiro Ishii

Shiro Ishii
Shiro Ishii

It wasn’t just the Nazis who conducted studies in chemical and biological warfare during WWII. Their Japanese allies also conducted experiments in order to aid their war effort. His major project was germ warfare and he experimented with guns, bombs and a multitude of other methods of delivery. His major targets were Chinese POWs as well as civilian centres. It is said that he was responsible for tens of thousands of deaths from cholera, bubonic plague and anthrax. He received immunity from prosecution for war crimes purely because the results of his experiments were said to be ‘absolutely invaluable’.

Conclusion

Despite that the people above were in a position of authority and had qualifications of some description giving them license to practice medicine, they represent in some cases the most horrific betrayals of personal and professional trust. It must be remembered though that such cases are rare where the Doctor forgets their Hippocratic Oath

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