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ECT: At least the pigs stopped screaming

    In 1938 the first use of ECT on a human being occurred in Rome, Italy. This act was done by neurologist Ugo Cerletti and his student and assistant, psychiatrist Lucio Bini.

    A trip to the slaughterhouse

    How Cerletti came across the idea of electroshock was by chance.

    Having gone to the butcher to buy a cut of beef for his dinner, he was told they had none, but he could walk around behind the shop to the local slaughterhouse who would serve him. Having done so, he observed that pigs being prepared for slaughter were given electroshocks across the temples and seizured but did not die. 1

    As is normally the case, the pigs of course were terrified of being in the slaughterhouse and their impending doom. Screaming, agitated they were shocked to make it easier for the final killing blow to be delivered. Having received the shock they were convulsing in an epileptic seizure, screaming no longer, awaiting death.

    One of the most astonishing aspects of this story is that this appalling scenario somehow prompted Cerletti to see the act as applicable to human beings in mental distress!

    Cerletti’s first human patient

    A man with mental difficulty was found roaming the streets of Naples in fascist Italy and ended up as Cerletti’s experimental patient. The man was said to have schizophrenia, suffering delusions and hallucinations.

    The Cerletti Electroshock machine. Francesca.pallone, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    One of the most astonishing aspects of this story is that this appalling scenario somehow prompted Cerletti to see the act as applicable to human beings in mental distress!

    The published report of the experiment and certainly that which Cerletti was eager to promote, reads as the patient had received a beneficial seizure, which apparently, miraculously returned to him a “clear head” and health.

    Miracle or myth

    Reports from others on what occurred including Bini’s notebooks presented a very different picture including three earlier failed attempts, each subsequent time raising the voltage on the machine built for the experiment.

    The patient according to Bini’s notes, found the experience unpleasant and resisted treatment on the third attempt. Fearing for his life, he in fact shouted at Cerletti to not administer “the deadly shake.” 2

    The patient completely relapsed two years later.

    Nonetheless, Cerletti and Bini, sensing fame and fortune, began the process of selling and promoting the use of their shock machine. Cerletti in fact, in 1947 was selling emulsions from the brains of pigs who had been subjected to electroshock as brain-curing elixers. Snake oil indeed!

    …..in 1947, through experiments on pigs, Cerletti extracted emulsions released by the brain under electroshock (what he called ‘acroagonines’), and he constructed a hypothesis about their brain-curing properties. 3

    Roberta Passione is Assistant Professor in the History of Science at the University of Milano-Bicocca when researching Bini’s note books described the glowing reports from Cerletti as “fictional” and having ” crossed the border of myth”. 4

    According to Roberta Passione, who has made a study of Lucio Bini’s notebooks, the events outlined above are entirely fictional. They constitute an ‘electro-shock novel’ which was authored by the self-celebrating Cerletti through the control he exercised over what his students could report. It is a self-fashioned heroic science narrative ‘that crosses the border of myth”.

    Allesandro Aruta. Shocking Waves at the Museum: The Bini–Cerletti Electro-shock Apparatus. 2011. 5

    Miracle or myth nonetheless, there is one thing we do know for sure and that is that at least the pigs stopped screaming.

    Further References

    ECT: Is this the best you can do?

    ECT is neither ‘completely safe’ nor ‘completely effective’. It is estimated that the use of ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy) in the USA alone provides around 1.8 billion dollars in annual income …
    ECT machine

    Electroconvulsive therapy side effects

    Psychiatry has been hesitant to provide a full account of possible side effects from electroconvulsive therapy and so they are …

    1. Carlo Patriarca, Carlo Alfredo Clerici, Stefano Zannella, and Carlo Fraticelli. Ugo Cerletti, Pathologica and electroconvulsive therapy. Pathologica. 2021 Dec; 113(6): 481–487.
    2. Allesandro Aruta. Shocking Waves at the Museum: The Bini–Cerletti Electro-shock Apparatus Med Hist. 2011 Jul; 55(3): 407–412.
    3. Allesandro Aruta. Shocking Waves at the Museum: The Bini–Cerletti Electro-shock Apparatus Med Hist. 2011 Jul; 55(3): 407–412.
    4. Roberta Passione, ‘Non solo l’elettroshock: Ugo Cerletti e il rinnovamento della Psichiatria italiana’, in Marco Piccolino (ed.), Neuroscienze Controverse: Da Aristotele alla moderna scienza del linguaggio (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2008), 258. 
    5. Allesandro Aruta. Shocking Waves at the Museum: The Bini–Cerletti Electro-shock Apparatus Med Hist. 2011 Jul; 55(3): 407–412.