6 most terrible doctors in history (7 photos)

Most of us have complete trust in doctors and know that can count on them in difficult times. Alas, some unfortunate lucky to trust the wrong people, and they fell victim to the unthinkable cruelty. We remember six doctors for whom the Hippocratic Oath was an empty sound.





1. Henry Howard Holmes

G.G. Holmes (real name Herman Webster Mudgett, pictured above) is often referred to as America's first serial killer. Exact amount casualties are unknown, but it is believed that he may have killed between 9 and 200 people.

After graduating as a doctor, Holmes rented a hotel in Chicago, which subsequently received the nickname "murder hotel" or "castle murders." Hidden throughout the hotel were secret rooms, trapdoors, soundproof rooms, gas burners in the walls and a cremation oven tel. When he finished with the bodies, he dissected them or sold them to medical universities.



After being caught in November 1894, Holmes confessed to 27 murders, although some of those he called his own the victims were actually alive. In the end he was tried for one murder - the murder of Benjamin Pitezel. Holmes convinced Pitezel fake his own death so his wife gets insurance payouts. But when everything was ready, Holmes killed Pitezel and took the money himself. Holmes hanged in 1896; he bequeathed to be buried in concrete so that no one could dig it up.

2. Thomas Neal Krim

Although he became famous as the Lambeth Poisoner, Krim began kill in Ontario in the 1870s and then continued to Chicago. In Ontario he helped his wife have an abortion, nearly killing her in the process. When she died a year later, he claimed that consumption killed his wife. Year later, the body of a woman with whom he had an affair was found outside his office She died as a result of chloroform poisoning. Escaping from charges in Ontario, Krim opened his own medical practice in Chicago offering abortions to prostitutes.



One of Cream's victims was Daniel Slott, the husband of his mistress. She testified against Krim, claiming that it was he who got her poison so that she can kill her husband. Krim sentenced to life imprisonment, but the sentence was commuted after his brother bribed authorities, and Krim was released.

After that, he moved to London, where he poisoned several prostitutes. He even wrote to local businessmen, pharmacists and doctors, accusing them of poisoning the women he killed, and demanding money for silence. Krim was arrested in 1892, and the jury returned an indictment. judgment in just 12 minutes.

His last words caused quite a stir. Reportedly that he managed to say, "I'm Jack..." before the noose was tightened. This led many to believe that Krim wanted to confess that he was Jack Ripper. However, this is unlikely, since he was in prison on the moment the murders took place.

3. John Bodkin Adams

Between 1946 and 1956, about 160 of Adams's patients Essex, UK, died under suspicious circumstances. Many of them died in a coma, in which, apparently, they were injected. artificially. Later it turned out that 132 patients included Adams in their will.

Adams fell under suspicion in 1956 after being treated Gertrude Hallett, who died suddenly shortly after she came to him for a reception. However, despite this incriminating incident, his trial was based on the alleged murder of Edith Alice Morrell, a wealthy widow who had died a few years earlier.



Adams escaped a guilty verdict, possibly because that the prosecution screwed up his case, because the testimony of the main witnesses for the prosecution (two nurses who helped care for Morrell) were refuted by entries in their own notebooks. In addition, myself Adams did not testify at the trial, which discouraged the prosecution, which, apparently, hoped that he would end up with "his chatter will bring himself to the gallows." It only took Adams 45 minutes to be acquitted of murder, but found guilty of forgery of prescriptions and falsification of documents.

It was removed from the register in 1957 but reinstated in 1961, and by July 1962 he again had a license to sell dangerous medicines. Although he was allowed to continue practicing, many of his older patients, unsurprisingly, changed doctors.

4. Harold Shipman

Shipman, pNicknamed "Dr. Death", killed more than 200 of their patients, although the exact number of victims we most likely already we'll never know. In 1974 he worked as a general practitioner, and his was convicted of forging prescriptions for pethidine for his own use. Shipman escaped with a fine and was allowed to continue working.



His victims were mostly elderly women whom he killed by lethal injection. When patients became bad during his visit, he called an ambulance in front of relatives of the patient, and then called back to cancel the call, when the patient was dying. Subsequent investigations showed that such there were no calls to the ambulance, and Shipman just pretended to call.

Suspicions arose when another doctor and a local worker funeral home noticed too many permits for cremation signed by Shipman. Finally he was caught when he tried to write a will on behalf of one of his victims. Shipman sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2000, and in 2004 he hanged himself in his cell.

5. Michael Swango

To the atrocities of this doctor who killed his patients lethal doses of drugs and tried to poison colleagues donuts with arsenic, you can devote a separate article.

Barely qualified as a doctor in 1983, Swango transferred from one medical institution to another - on his own desire or as a result of dismissal - as soon as people around began to notice how much death surrounds him. Now it seems that hospitals in At that time, they tried to cover up any wrongdoing, and this policy led to the fact that Swango avoided punishment for many years, simply by changing places of work.



At some point, the FBI became interested in him, so he went to underground, and then, in 1994, changed his name to Jack Kirk. He settled chemist at a wastewater treatment plant in Atlanta. When the FBI caught up him, he fled to Africa, where he worked as a doctor, until mysterious deaths again did not draw attention to him. In 1997, he was caught flying across America to Saudi Arabia.

He was tried for only three murders, although the reports it has been suggested that it may be responsible for 30-60 deaths. He pleaded guilty because Zimbabwe wanted to extradite him for crimes committed there, for which he was threatened with the death penalty. He was sentenced to three life terms without parole release and is currently in federal maximum security prison ADX.

6. Linda Burfield Hazzard

The only woman on the list ends this post. Hazzard had no medical education, but she could practice medicine, exploiting a loophole in Washington state laws inherited from practitioners of alternative medicine.

Hazzard believed that excessive eating fills body with toxins and causes many diseases, therefore, prescribed fasting for all of his patients. Forty people died in her sanatorium in Washington, which has earned the nickname "Hungry Heights". The diet included small amounts of tomato and asparagus juice along with enemas and massage.



The death of wealthy Claire Williamson in 1912 led to charge of manslaughter. At the trial, it turned out that Hazzard with husband appointed themselves beneficiaries of the property of several patients. She spent only two years in prison as she, for unknown reasons, pardoned. After that, she moved to New Zealand, where in 1938 died of hunger, experiencing a new therapeutic starvation.