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The author has apparently prepared this booklet to substantiate his claim for priority in discovering the usefulness of insulin in shock treatment of the psychoses. Priority, he says, is now falsely attributed to Sakel. By 1922 Schuster had arrived at the conclusion that mental disease could be favorably influenced by exceptionally large doses of insulin. The booklet includes brief abstracts of 30 case reports of various types of psychoses in which treatment with large doses of insulin was employed. The earliest of these records is dated January 1921. (Banting and Best announced the discovery of insulin in February 1922!)
Pages 15 to 65 are devoted to reviews of several phases of carbohydrate metabolism, and whenever possible these are discussed in relation to cerebral physiology. Schuster says that insulin acts in cases of psychoses by inducing "brain shock," which is related to protein shock and to the metabolism of protein, carbohydrate