‘The Insulin Myth’, a coruscating article in the Lancet in 1953, had concluded that ‘insulin offers the schizophrenic no long-term benefits’. The author was Harold Bourne, a courageous thirty-year-old junior doctor who was subjected to the equivalent of a social media pile-on in the letters page of the Lancet for taking on the insulin coma therapy old guard. Four years later, however, another critical article in the Lancet was (for most people) the final nail in the coffin.
