Convulsive therapy

The convulsions of the epileptic state may be artificially induced by the injection of certain drugs or by the use of electric shock treatment. The violence of the convulsions may be reduced with other drugs and the pain largely eliminated by combining these with intravenous anaesthesia. The shock to the nervous system caused by these epileptic convulsions favourably influences the course of mental disease and is held to be antagonistic to the schizophrenic state.