LSD Psychiatrist on YouTube

Humphry Osmond Humphry Osmond is probably best known for the psychiatric experiments he conducted with LSD at the Weyburn Mental Hospital in Saskatchewan, Canada in the 1950s, and for the inventing the term “psychedelic” in 1957. I recently ran across this video on YouTube in which Osmond monitors the progress of Christopher Mayhew after he ingests a dose of mescaline. The video, originally shot in 1955 for an episode of the BBC show “Panorama” (which was never aired due to its controversial nature), is interspersed with clips of Mayhew watching the video about 30 years later, reflecting on the meaning of his mescaline experience, which he describes as “the most interesting thing I’ve ever done.”

The person who posted this to YouTube does not make clear the source or the exact date of the video. It appears to be from a British television documentary production, perhaps the 1986 BBC documentary “LSD – The Beyond Within.”

About Christopher Green

Professor of Psychology at York University (Toronto). Former editor of the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. Creator of the "Classics in the History of Psychology" website and of the "This Week in the History of Psychology" podcast series.