• HOME
• THE LANGUAGE OF MADNESS
• THE ASYLUM
• • Asylum Design
  • Patient Buildings
• SOCIETY
• • Urban & Rural Life
  • Class & Gender
  • The Hysterical Female
  • The Evils of "Self-Abuse"
  • Family
  • Visitors
• LEGISLATION
• • Legislative Influence
  • Origins of Legislation and the Criminality of Insanity
  • Teenaged Years: Marked Custody Transition
  • Turn of the Century: Voluntary Admissions
  • Updated Act: The Mental Hospital Act
• SUPERINTENDANTS
• STAFF
• • Working at the LAI
  • Hiring Practices
  • Rules for Employees
  • Employee Roles in Moral Therapy
  • Doctors at LAI
  • Doctor Connections to UWO
  • Training School for Nurses
  • Attendants
  • General Staff
• PATIENT PERSPECTIVES
• • Introduction
  • Patient Art
  • Patient Letters
  • Their Voice
• MEDICAL TREATMENTS
• • Medical Treatment Introduction
  • Use of Restraints
  • Drug and Alcohol
  • Hydrotherapy
  • Female Surgeries
  • Neurosyphilis
  • Shock Therapy
  • Lobotomies
• MORAL THERAPY
• • Moral Therapy Introduction
  • Labour
  • Amusements
  • Diet
  • Religion
• THE WORLD WARS
• • Before the First World War
  • During the First World War
  • After the First World War
  • The First World War and the LAI
  • First World War Veterans at the LAI
  • The Second World War
• MEMORIES OF RMHCL
• • Introduction
  • Their Memories

Dr. George Herbert Stevenson 1934-1952

The First World War interrupted Dr. Stevenson's undergraduate education at the University of Toronto. He enlisted in the 34^th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force and served at the No. 3 Canadian Stationary Hospital, in the Dardanelles and in Egypt. He graduated with an M.B. degree in 1918 and with an M.D. and Certificate in Psychology in 1935. He attended Harvard Medical School on a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1920; later in 1927, he studied at Boston and Baltimore as a Commonwealth Fund Travelling Fellow.

Dr. Stevenson served as superintendent at Ontario Hospital in Whitby before his tenure at the London Hospital. While at Whitby, he developed the first graduate course in psychiatric nursing in Canada. He was Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Western Ontario, teaching in the Faculty of Medicine while he was superintendent, and as special lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Psychology of the Faculty of Arts. In 1939, Dr. Stevenson was named president elect of the American Psychiatric Association, taking office in 1940, making him the first Canadian president of the APA. He provided leadership for the American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology as director for seven years. Dr. Stevenson demonstrated his commitment to the integration of psychiatry with general medicine with his establishment of the psychiatric unit in the Victoria Hospital, London.

He was attested by election as a Fellow of the Humanities Section of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1952, he relocated to Vancouver, and directed drug addiction research at the University of British Columbia, eventually accepting a government post in the field of mental health as a community psychiatrist in Hawaii. He retired to Florida, and after a lengthy illness died in 1976. Dr. Stevenson co-authored Personality and Its Deviations: An Introduction to Abnormal and Medical Psychology with Dr. Leola E. Neal, and authored Drug Addiction in British Columbia, a Research Survey in 1965. Dr. Stevenson wrote extensively, and his works appeared in a variety of medical and professional journals.

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