" In 1938, Cerletti and Bini introduced electroshock treatment (EST), " (http://www.ect.org/resources/Sham/myth.html)

"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).

The Scientist : Anywhere in the World

If I am not mistaken, the above says, more or less : the fact that the stimulation did not actually kill the pigs had somehow provided encouragement for attempts to define parameters that might be safe and effective for application to humans.

I for one cannot but have some doubts about this argument. The fact that something did not actually kill the pigs does not seem to me to suggest or imply anything like its safety for application to the humans.

Please do not disregard these issues, the scientist (any real scientist, anywhere in the world). Should there be any mistakes harm could occur.

 

Abrams, Richard, 1937- Title(s) 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.