Word: metrazol
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...startling methods of shocking lunatics back to sanity were discussed by doctors at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in Richmond, Va. last week. Both types of treatment are mechanical, differ from chemical injections of insulin or metrazol, which are widely used in hospitals throughout...
...over 10,000 convulsions have been given to patients abroad and in the U.S. The proportion of improvement depends upon the type and length of illness, is about the same as for insulin and metrazol-estimates range roughly from IS to 50%. But of course psychiatrists do not yet know how permanent any shock treatment is over a period of years...
Although electric shock may not replace the standard insulin treatment, most psychiatrists think it far superior to metrazol. Its advantages: 1) the convulsions are not usually as violent as those produced by metrazol; 2) since patients lose consciousness immediately, they do not remember the frightening "aura" that precedes a metrazol convulsion; 3) electric treatment is much cheaper than insulin or metrazol-a machine costs less than $300. But electric shock is safe only in the hands of a trained psychiatrist...
Operation on the Mind. Schizophrenia, the kind of insanity characterized by withdrawal into a dream world, is the most widespread mental disease in the U. S. In recent years convulsions induced by insulin, metrazol, azoman and electric shock have improved many schizophrenics. Last week Dr. Edward Adam ("Streck") Strecker, a U. of Pa. psychiatric bigwig, described a new brain operation for schizophrenia. It is called pre-frontal leucotomy, involves drilling a small hole in the temple, inserting a narrow, flat-bladed instrument with which a fan-shaped cut is made in the brain lobes...
More serious than this subjective terror are dislocations of the jaw, tiny compression fractures of the spine, which occurred to metrazol patients in over 40% of one series of cases. During their violent convulsions, patients arch their backs with such force that sometimes they literally crush their vertebrae...