5. Electroconvulsive therapy was used throughout the mid-20th century as a treatment for mental disorders through the often forced electrocution of patients
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, also known as electroshock therapy or “shock treatment”) is a treatment of psychiatric disorders wherein seizures are forcibly induced in a patient by the introduction of electricity. The use of seizures in this manner was considered as far back as the 16th century and the invention of electricity was merely utilized as an easier and supposedly safe means to achieve this desired result; as early as 1755 this medical practice was employed in a rudimentary form, with Benjamin Franklin recording the allegedly successful curing of “a woman of hysterical fits” via an electrostatic machine. Introduced in its modern form in 1934 by Hungarian neuropsychiatrist Ladislas Meduna, believing the medical use of convulsive therapy was capable of curing mental disorders ranging from schizophrenia to epilepsy, Italian Ugo Cerletti adapted this work after observing the anesthetizing effects of electricity in pigs prior to slaughter; nominated for a Nobel Prize for his work, by 1940 the practice of using ECT to treat mental disorders had spread into common usage worldwide.
Although serving legitimate medical purposes still today, albeit only used in situations of informed consent and typically in instances of last resort for advanced and medication-resistant cases of severe catatonia or manic depression, ECT served to torment and abuse the mentally ill throughout the middle of the 20th century. Often forcibly applied to patients, including asylum inmates, ECT is known to have caused an abundance of complications and negative side-effects; among these are retrograde amnesia in almost all patients, affecting both short and long-term memory permanently, in addition to hypoxia or anoxia as well as potentially inducing harmful accelerations of other underlying medical disorders.