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This volume, besides being of the greatest value as a survey of the present status of physical treatment of schizophrenia, is extremely interesting from the viewpoint of the history of medicine and psychiatry.
In the Middle Ages shock treatments were used rather indiscriminately for mental disorders, for example spinning the patient on a stool, or dropping him from a trapdoor into water and letting him nearly drown. But medicine and psychiatry were not sufficiently advanced at that time to study the physiological and psychological effects of this treatment. Now a variety of shock treatments are used, all of them severe biological assaults. Although concerned mostly with insulin and cardiazol, the report includes papers on the use of prolonged sleep, of frontal lobotomy, and on animal experiments with electric shocks. The variety of procedures seems to speak against specificity in their effects.
M. Müller's opening paper includes a presentation of the problem in broad perspective. On page 19, he states 'These problems lie in the most diverse fields and interest alike physiologists, internists, neurologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists. This is the most outstanding and fascinating part of the new method of treatment… These findings should stand as a warning not to approach the problem from one side only. Neither