Joseph Cheesman Thompson
Joseph Cheesman Thompson (1874–1943) was an American career medical officer in the United States Navy who attained the rank of commander before retirement in 1929.
His foes called him "Crazy Thompson", but to friends he was known as "Snake", a nickname derived from his expertise in the field of herpetology.
On May 18, 1900, he was detached from the USS Bennington, a gunboat that saw service in Hawaii, the Philippines and along the Pacific coasts of North and South America, and he was ordered to Mare Island Hospital for some unspecified treatment.
", as part of the First Regiment United States Marines China Relief Expedition, which was sent to Peking to rescue foreigners and Chinese Christians who were under attack by the "Boxers" or "Fists of Righteous Harmony".
[6] On December 22, 1900, The New York Times reported, "Assistant surgeon J. C. Thompson is detached from Cavite Hospital and ordered to the Solace.
[9][10] Thompson was recruited by friend Consuelo Seoane to chart potential invasion routes of Japan while posing as South African naturalists.
Sociologist William Sims Bainbridge has recounted this version of Thompson's Navy espionage adventures: "[Louis Livingston Seaman]'s brother-in-law Consuelo Andrew Seoane served as cartographer during the Philippine Insurrection and in 1909–1911 was a spy for the United States Army, traveling under a pseudonym throughout the Japanese Empire with Joseph "Snake" Thompson, pretending to be herpetologists studying coastal reptiles and amphibians, but actually charting invasion routes."
[13] Seoane's widow Rhoda has written of Commander Thompson: "One day they received a courtesy call from a visiting Japanese natural history professor.
Thompson showed the professor's card to Consuelo with a grimace and said that our new caller has undoubtedly been sent by the police to inquire into our knowledge of natural history.
[17][18] Thompson helped found the Zoological Society of San Diego, and was its vice president previous to 1917, at which point he was called to serve again as a doctor in the US Navy.
He was elected vice-president of the Zoological Society, and was appointed with Dr. Harry Wegeforth and Frank Stephens to draw up the Articles of Incorporation and the By-Laws.
In a news article he wrote in 1916, he described the arrangement of exhibits as they would appear in Balboa Park's Pepper Grove, an early choice for the Zoo's location.
[23] In Guam, Commander Thompson became involved in archaeological explorations, and the 1923 Journal of the Polynesian Society reported that due to his efforts "much information has been obtained about the culture of the vanished Chamorros, a flourishing race at the time of Magellan's visit in 1521.
[38] In 1923 Thompson accompanied then-12-year-old L. Ron Hubbard, the future founder of Scientology, aboard the USS Ulysses S. Grant.
[43] In one of the lectures, Thompson argued that "Mental diseases are not caused by actual physical injury to the brain [...] are a result of some suppression of thought in the subconscious mind."
[1] Meyers consulted Abraham Brill, who reported that he "considers [Thompson] a crazy person, insane and dangerous".
[1] Thompson reportedly "wore his uniform constantly as an assertion of authority, with a green scarf fastened by a gold pin in the shape of a snake.
"[1] Thompson equated Freud's work to the discoveries of Copernicus and Darwin, and he wrote an article suggesting that psychoanalysis could cure 50 percent of all people ill in hospitals (not just mental patients).
The next year Dr. Meyer wrote to a Johns Hopkins doctor calling Joseph Thompson "a clever, but unsavory psychoanalyst".
In 1943 the Journal of Heredity published posthumously an article Thompson co-wrote, titled, "The Genetics of the Burmese Cat".
[42] Thompson served as a senior medical officer at Pearl Harbor and published articles on Psychoanalysis in the local paper.
[50][51] While in Hawaii, Thompson publicly raised questions in the press about the sanity of Myles Fukunaga, who faced trial for the murder of a ten-year-old.
[55][56] In San Francisco, Thompson held public lectures,[57] saw patients, trained lay analysts Aaron Morafka, Earl W. Nilsson and Jacques Schnier.
