insulin Shock and Awe: When Doctors Thought Comas Were Cool
Insulin Shock Therapy is another medical marvel where they claimed to cure mental illness by nearly killing the patients!
Ladies and gentlemen, gather ’round for the medical equivalent of “hold my beer and watch this” – Insulin Shock Therapy! It’s the treatment that proves sometimes the cure really is worse than the disease!
Picture this: It’s the 1930s, and psychiatrists are scratching their heads, wondering how to help those pesky schizophrenics. Then along comes Dr. Manfred Sakel, the Einstein of almost killing people, with a brilliant idea – let’s pump patients full of insulin until they pass out! Because nothing says “mental health” like a medically induced coma, right?
Here’s how this rollercoaster of medical malpractice worked:
-Inject patient with massive doses of insulin (because who needs blood sugar anyway?)
-Watch them sweat, twitch, and fall into a coma (it’s like a really messed up magic show)
-Keep them unconscious for an hour or more (the longer the better – we’re going for gold here!)
-Wake them up with glucose (surprise! you’re not dead!)
-Rinse and repeat 50-60 times, because if at first you don’t succeed, just keep torturing your patients!
But wait, there’s more! Side effects included brain damage, obesity, and death. But hey, at least they weren’t hearing voices anymore – mostly because their brains were too scrambled to process anything!
The best part? This treatment was all the rage for decades! Doctors claimed success rates of over 80%, probably because any change in mental state – including turning patients into vegetables – was considered an improvement. Talk about setting the bar so low it’s practically underground!
And let’s not forget the charming way they restrained patients during seizures. Nothing says “healing” like being strapped down while your body goes haywire, right? It’s like a really twisted amusement park ride, except instead of a souvenir photo, you get PTSD!
But don’t worry, folks. By the 1960s, someone finally realized that maybe, just maybe, repeatedly putting people in comas wasn’t the best idea. Who would have thought? It only took three decades of turning people’s brains into scrambled eggs for science to catch up!
So next time you’re feeling down, just remember – at least no one’s trying to cure you with insulin anymore. Unless you’re diabetic, in which case, please do take your insulin. But maybe don’t take medical advice from 1930s psychiatrists. Just a thought!
On a more serious note, although all of this is deadly serious, while insulin shock therapy was primarily used for treating schizophrenia in adults, it was often administered to children with various psychiatric conditions. The use of this treatment in children was not limited to schizophrenia. Based on the search results, children received insulin shock therapy for the following conditions:
-Psychotic disturbances: Insulin therapy was considered an important means of treating serious psychiatric disorders in children.
-Schizophrenia in children: In 1938, Lutz suggested that insulin shock therapy could be used to treat schizophrenia in children.
-General psychiatric disorders: The treatment was used for various serious psychiatric conditions in children, not just schizophrenia.
It’s important to note that the use of insulin shock therapy in children was controversial and is now considered unethical and ineffective. The treatment carried significant risks, including the possibility of severe hypoglycemia, brain damage, and even death. Today, we recognize that many of the conditions for which this treatment was used in children may have been misdiagnosed or could be better treated with modern psychiatric approaches and medications. Ya think?
Bibliography:
- Wikipedia. “Insulin shock therapy”
- Science Museum. “‘Heroic therapies’ in psychiatry”
- Johnson, W. (1939). “Insulin shock therapy study”
- Britannica. “Insulin shock therapy”
- WebMD. “The Insulin Coma Therapy Mystery”
