Question regarding the Preface : The inherent safety ? has been augmented ?
Electroconvulsive therapy / Richard Abrams. Edition 3rd ed. Publisher New York : Oxford University Press, 1997. Paging ix, 382 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. Notes Includes bibliographical references (p. 295-367) and index.SHAME ON YOU, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Scientist, any true scientist, anywhere in the world, just Look on what is going on. (WPT)
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Is That a Satire on Science, or what is that ?"In 1934, Chiauzzi, working in Cerletti's laboratory, produced seizures in animals by passing a 50-Hz, 22-V stimulus for 0.25 seconds across electrodes placed in the mouth and rectum; in May of 1937, Bini, another of Cerletti's' assistants (and himself a fine clinician who later wrote a leading Italian textbook on psychiatry), reported similar animal studies at an international meeting in Munsingen, Switzerland, on new therapies for schizophrenia. About 50% of the dogs thus stimulated died, and, according to Kalinowsky (1986), it was Bini who first realized the danger of passing current through the heart with oral-rectal electrodes and who demonstrated the safety [?] of applying both electrodes to the temples of the dogs he was studying. Bini confirmed this during a visit with another of Cerletti's assistants, Fernando Accornero, to the Rome slaughterhouse where, they had been told, pigs were killed by electricity. In actuality, the pigs were first convulsed by an electrical stimulus to the head and then dispatched while they were comatose. The fact that such transcerebral electrical stimulation did not actually kill the pigs provided encouragement for continued attempts by Cerletti and Bini to define the electrical stimulus parameters that might be safe and effective for application to humans (Cerletti, 1950; Accornero, 1980)."
(Source, Abrams, p. 6).Comment Was this a writer for the famous Onion magazine moonlighting on the 'scientific' subjets : or could it be the converse ?
Howbeit : "Bini .. first realized the danger of passing current through the heart with oral-rectal electrodes and who demonstrated the safety of applying both electrodes to the temples of the dogs he was studying."
As I gather from other sources, it was applying both electrodes to the temples of the dogs that would more readily kill the poor beasts — and not the oral-rectal passage.
Any Scientist Anywhere in the World, please do some review of this 'science'. As a matter of common sense reasoning on the probability of some outcome or other, it would seem that the passage of electricity through both temples would carry more risk than the oral-rectal passage.
That was exactly what I have seen reported by another source, credible (in my opinion).
That trancends the category of humour, and by many a stage. I seems to have seen other such bits in the text considered (on electroshock)