{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2014}} thumb thumb '''Sir Frederick Walker Mott''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|KBE|MD|FRCP|FRS|LLD}} (23 October 1853 in Brighton, Sussex – 8 June 1926 in Birmingham, Warwickshire) was one of the pioneers of biochemistry in Britain.<ref>[http://johnmadjackfuller.homestead.com/fullerianprofessors.html Patron of the Royal Institution]. Johnmadjackfuller.homestead.com. Retrieved on 8 June 2014.</ref> He is noted for his work in neuropathology and endocrine glands in relation to mental disorder, and consequently as a psychiatrist and social scientist. He was Croonian Lecturer to the Royal College of Physicians for the year 1900.<ref>{{cite journal|title=MOTT. Frederick Walker|journal=Who's Who|year=1907|volume= 59|page=1266|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yEcuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1266}}</ref>
The Maudsley Hospital in London was Mott's idea, inspired by Emil Kraepelin's clinic in Germany, and Mott conducted the negotiations for its funding and construction. He ran the pathology laboratory which was transferred there, and treated shell shock patients during World War I. His reputation had been greatly enhanced by helping establish that 'general paralysis of the insane' was actually due to syphilis, but he has been criticised for overly organic and degenerative assumptions in regard to mental illness including shell shock.<ref>[http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kcmhr/publications/assetfiles/2014/Jones2014f.pdf 'An atmosphere of cure': Frederick Mott, shell shock and the Maudsley], kcl.ac.uk. Accessed 11 January 2023.</ref>
After the war, in a lecture to the Eugenics Education Society, he claimed that shell shock was rare in volunteers as opposed to regular conscripted men, and that it was not a new disorder but merely a variation occurring in those already predisposed.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=DWVtBQAAQBAJ ''Shell Shocked Britain: The First World War's Legacy for Britain's Mental Health''], books.google.com. Accessed 11 January 2023.</ref>
Mott, like Maudsley, appears to have held that mental illness was inherited due to degenerate family lines that worsened until dying out, though his selecting of cases and statistics were questioned by other eugenicists.<ref>[http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/s1-13/51/193.full.pdf THE SO-CALLED LAW OF ANTICIPATION IN MENTAL DISEASE], 1933.</ref>
Mott advanced an overarching theory that mental disease was due to pathology of the sexual reproductive system, as evidenced for example by atrophied testes, causing breakdown of cerebral neurons in certain parts of the brain.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Organ extracts and the development of psychiatry: hormonal treatments at the Maudsley Hospital 1923-1938 |date=29 May 2012 |doi=10.1002/jhbs.21548|pmid = 22644956|pmc = 3594693|last1 = Evans|first1 = B.|last2 = Jones|first2 = E.|journal = Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences|volume = 48|issue = 3|pages = 251–76}}</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=o68pY6NPE3IC ''International Relations in Psychiatry: Britain, Germany, and the United States to World War II''], books.google.com. Accessed 11 January 2023.</ref>
==Timeline== *1884 Lecturer in physiology at the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School *1895 Director of the London County Council laboratory at Claybury Asylum.<ref>[http://studymore.org.uk/bio.htm#FrederickMott Frederick Mott biography]. Studymore.org.uk. Retrieved on 8 June 2014.</ref> *1896 Fellow of the Royal Society<ref>{{Cite journal | doi = 10.1038/054133a0| bibcode = 1896Natur..54..133.| title = Notes| journal = Nature| volume = 54| issue = 1389| pages = 133–137| year = 1896}}</ref> *1909–12 Fullerian Professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy *1910 ''The Brain And The Voice In Speech And Song'' *1911 Awarded Fothergill Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Medicine<ref>{{cite web| url=http://munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biography/Details/3222| title=Sir Frederick Walker Mott|publisher=Royal College of Physicians|accessdate=12 January 2015}}</ref> *1916 ''The Effects of High Explosives Upon the Central Nervous System'' The Lancet 1 (1916): 331–338 *1919 Knighthood *1923 ''The Action of Alcohol on Man'' (London, New York: Longmans Green) with Ernest Henry Starling (1866–1927), Robert Hutchison (1871–) *1925–26 President of the ''Medico-Psychological Association'' *1926 President of the ''Royal Medico-Psychological Association'', the Royal Charter having been granted in March 1926
==References== {{Commons category}} {{wikisource|works=or}} {{Reflist}}
==External links== * {{Gutenberg author | id=4836| name=Frederick Walker Mott}} * {{Internet Archive author |sname=Frederick Walker Mott}} * {{Librivox author |id=15632}}
{{s-start}} {{s-aca}} {{succession box | before = William Stirling | title = Fullerian Professor of Physiology | years = 1909–1912 | after = William Bateson}} {{s-end}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mott, Frederick Walker}} Category:1853 births Category:1926 deaths Category:English biochemists Category:Mental health professionals Category:History of mental health in the United Kingdom Category:English pathologists Category:Fullerian Professors of Physiology Category:Scientists from Brighton Category:Founders of the British Psychological Society Category:Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians Category:Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:Physicians of the Maudsley Hospital Category:British fellows of the Royal Society