Word: patient
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) dates back to 1938, when Italian Psychiatrists Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, searching for a treatment for schizophrenia, used electricity to induce convulsions in a disturbed patient. Afterward, his condition improved. In the ensuing years, ECT became a common treatment for severe psychotic illnesses, both in Europe...
Proponents of ECT also point out that modern techniques are far removed from the horror of Cuckoo's Nest. Says Yudofsky, "The only way you physically know a seizure is taking place is that sometimes you see a finger wiggling slightly." The patient is injected with a short-acting anesthetic, then a muscle relaxant to prevent the sudden muscular contractions that in the past occasionally caused fractured bones or chipped teeth. An electrocardiogram is sometimes used to monitor the heart rhythm and oxygen is administered to prevent possible brain damage after the shock...
Even if they survive, children under two will be permanently scarred by prolonged starvation. Most brain growth occurs in the uterus and before the age of two; adequate nutrition after that cannot remedy an earlier deficiency. For older survivors, recovery can be complete. Doctors warn, however, that a patient must be reintroduced carefully and gradually to food. The heart and digestive system are so weak that a sudden gorging can induce shock and death. Well-meaning G.I.s at the end of World War II inadvertently killed many concentration camp inmates by giving them big meals. It may take a month...
...insensitive. Worse, he labels as brain-damaged those who refuse to properly appreciate modern art. Those who condemn abstraction do so, because they require an "already known order, familiar and reassuring." Amazingly, Schapiro calls on a neurologist to verify this "handicap": "The sense of order in the patient is an expression of his impoverishment with respect to an essentially human trait: the capacity for adequate shifting of attitude...
Sullivan--a former sports columnist for the old Boston Herald-Traveler, offers his most insightful writing in an appraisal of Fenway's fans: How do you describe Red Sox fans? Devoted. Patient. Long-suffering. And perhaps a little masochistic, always coming back for more frustration after having their hearts broken. They have even been rooting for the Red Sox at some road games and you wonder which is the visiting team...Fenway's fans--they're a rare species, some of the world's best...and a few of the worst...