History of Electroconvulsive Therapy

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The traditional litany on the history of the medical uses of electricity, beginning with the Roman use of electric fish to treat headaches (Harms, 1956; Sandford, 1966; Brandon, 1981), is simply beside the point; electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) evolved solely as a result of Ladislaus von Meduna’s original investigations on the effects of camphor-induced convulsions in schizophrenic patients. It is the chronology of the medical (and specifically, psychiatric) uses of convulsions that provides the appropriate historical perspective to his work.</jats:p> <jats:p>This chapter draws extensively, and often without specific attribution, from the excellent historical reviews of the subject by Mowbray (1959), Sandford (1966), Fink (1979, 1984), Brandon (1981), Kalinowsky (1982, 1986), Endler (1988), and Endler and Persad (1988); from Cerletti’s (1950) personal recollections; from the English translations of the autobiography of Meduna (1985); from Accomero’s (1988) eyewitness account of the discovery of ECT; and from my own numerous conversations over 25 years and my published interview with Lothar Kalinowsky (Abrams, 1988a).</jats:p>