RESULTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE INSULIN-SHOCK TREATMENT OF SCHIZOPHRENIA
EARL D. BOND M. D.1,
JOSEPH HUGHES M. D.1, , and
JAMES A. FLAHERTY M. D.1
1 Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, Pa.
1. In every hospital using insulin-shock the patients treated should be followed for five years. Another group of patients, or other groups, as near alike as possible should be followed for the same time as controls. It seems certain that relapses after favorable responses will follow in all groups.
2. In the valuable paper just published by Malamud and Render9 it is stated that a study of the course and prognosis in schizophrenia should include the criteria used by the author in diagnosis. We take a little exception to this statement because it might give encouragement to more varying personal standards for schizophrenia. After all, it is safer for psychiatrists to use the criteria put down in the official Statistical Manual,10 and to work toward a definition which all can use.
3. Insulin-shock therapy is not a complete answer. But the transformation of the patient's condition is so immediate and favorable in a majority of cases that it will have place in, or provide suggestions for a future therapy, and this without regard to whether good results last for an afternoon or indefinitely. It is only fair to remember that Sakel spoke of insulin-shock as the artillery in a general combined attack on the disease process.
4. Insulin in convulsive doses alters the metabolic processes of nerve.
