William Lorenz

He was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal for his combat actions in France, and had previously served a tour of duty during the Spanish–American War in 1898.

He remained in the U.S. Army National Guard after his service in Europe, attaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (O5).

[2] He took postgraduate training in neuropsychiatry at the Manhattan State Hospital in New York, and completed a fellowship in that discipline with Adolf Meyer in Illinois from 1908 to 1910.

Lorenz is credited, along with William Bleckwenn, with developing the technique of sodium amytal-mediated disinhibition ("narcosynthesis" or "narcoanalysis"), which allowed psychiatrists to probe the minds of psychotic patients for diagnostic information.

[5] Lorenz collaborated with physiologists and pharmacologists on methods to break catatonic mutism; these studies, which were sporadically but dramatically successful, used dilute intravenous solutions of sodium cyanide and the inhalation of carbon dioxide.