Medicine: Anesthetizing the Devil

Anesthetizing The Devil

From the Middle Ages, when sticks were used to "beat the devil" out of mental patients, through the middle '30s, when electric and insulin shock therapy began, physical treatment of the insane relied on rude methods. Even now, shock "cures" may be worse than the disease: they often fail to cure, and sometimes the patient breaks a jaw or crushes his backbone in violent, convulsive spasms.

Last week the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene announced that it had developed a gentler way of bringing on the coma which seems to relax sufferers from manic-depressive states. The treatment: intravenous injections of ether.t The ether solution is dripped slowly into the veins (in a technique similar to that used in blood transfusions) for 2½ to 3 hours. The treatment is repeated every day, for ten days to a month.

Ether treatments can be given to patients whose physical condition prevents the use of shock. There is no danger of fractures or dislocations, no anxiety, and no sign of unpleasant aftereffects, reported the New York researchers. Of 40 depressive patients treated, 21 recovered enough to be released on convalescent care, ten stayed in the hospital with "marked improvement," and nine were unchanged.*