Word: meduna
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...Meduna, who claims 68% success, explains how he thinks it works: in neurotics, the nerve cells are sensitive to abnormally small electric currents, so that they react oftener than they should, or else they react with abnormal severity to ordinary currents. He believes that carbon dioxide reacts in the cells to restore a more normal threshold of sensitivity...
Sniff the Gas. In Carbon Dioxide Therapy (Charles C. Thomas; $5), Psychiatrist Meduna claims to have a possible answer: a few sniffs of the gas which puts the bubbles in soda water. This, according to Dr. Meduna, may make psychoanalysis unnecessary. And, he contends, it is wonderfully effective for anxiety, inferiority complexes and homosexuality, or such psychosomatic complaints as spastic colon, frigidity, impotence and stuttering...
...native Budapest, Dr. von Meduna was one of the first to use shock treatment (with the drug Metrazol) for psychoses. He tried carbon dioxide with no success. Soon after he settled in Chicago in 1939 (and dropped the "von"), Dr. Meduna decided that psychoses were too deep-seated to reach with carbon dioxide. But neuroses offered him a promising field...
...Meduna method, the patient gets a mixture of 70% oxygen and 30% carbon dioxide† through an ordinary anesthetic mask. After a dozen whiffs (on the average), the patient loses consciousness. He usually sweats and begins to struggle...
Even at Illinois' College of Medicine, Dr. Meduna's theory and practice are not yet generally accepted. Sniffed Colleague Franz Alexander: "Meduna is merely choking, instead of shocking, his patients back to health." But if Gasman Meduna's theory pans out, Psychoanalyst Alexander may be out of business...