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Since Sakel's discovery of insulin shock therapy, in 1933, and the introduction of electric shock by Cerletti and Bini, in 1938, the most frequent questions asked are: What is the ultimate effect of repeated induced convulsive seizures? Are organic changes produced?
The investigators who have reported histologic changes in the brain have not been in substantial agreement with each other. Whereas the problem of damage to the brain looms large in the minds of some investigators who have induced convulsive seizures in animals, others have carried out similar experiments with no cerebral injury. The opponents and proponents of shock therapy have sparred back and forth from enthusiasm to conservatism, and even condemnation. There are those even who have posed the possibility that electrically induced seizures lead to epilepsy in a person so predisposed. Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence that cerebral function is disturbed. Not only are electroencephalographic changes present during