| |
IMPORTANT FACTS
1. Electroshock “therapy”
was developed in Rome from the use of electricity on pigs prior to slaughter.
2. Theories abound, but
psychiatry cannot explain how electroshock “works.”
3. The ECT procedure
itself is no more scientific or therapeutic than being hit over the head with
a bat.
4. Despite legislative
bans and laws limiting its use, ECT is still practiced today.
CHAPTER
ONE Deadly Electrical Assault
Few are aware that a Rome slaughterhouse inspired the so-called scientific procedure
known as shock treatment or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
In the 1930s, psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti, the chairman of the Department of
Mental and Neurological Diseases at the University of Rome, began experimental
electric shock treatments on dogs, placing an electrode in the dog’s mouth and
another in its anus. Half of the animals died from cardiac arrest.
In 1938, Cerletti changed his experimentation by applying electric shocks to
the head, following a slaughterhouse visit where he observed butchers incapacitating
pigs with electric shocks prior to slitting their throats. Inspired, he conducted
further experiments on the pigs, finally concluding that “these clear proofs
caused all my doubts to vanish, and without more ado I gave instructions in
the clinic to undertake, next day, the experiment upon man. Very likely, except
for this fortuitous and fortunate circumstance of pigs’ pseudo-electrical butchery,
ECT would not yet have been born.”
Cerletti’s first victim was involuntary—a prisoner. After the first electric
shock had seared through the man’s head, the man screamed, “Not another one!
It’s deadly!” A witness recounts that, “The Professor [Cerletti then] suggested
that
another treatment with a higher voltage be given.”
German psychiatrist Lothar B. Kalinowsky, who witnessed this first ECT as a
student of Cerletti, became one of its most ardent and vigorous proponents.
He developed his own electric shock machine and in 1938 introduced his procedure
to France, Holland, England, and later, the United States. By 1940, ECT was
used internationally.
Next
Back
to Contents
|
|
