Mother’s Little Helper: Psychiatry, Gender, and the Rise of Psychopharmaceuticals
Dig: A History Podcast
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Psychiatry and the Magic Bullet
During the last half of the nineteenth century, medical science was advancing at what seemed like a startling pace. Yet psychiatry had changed very little from the beginning of the century. They didn't even know what the germ was for a magic bullet to kill. By the 19 thirties and forties, they had shifted focus to the brain. This was generally the theory that you wanted to kind of shock the person or reset the brain somehow. One treatment to do that involved giving patients an overdose of insolen which put them into hypo glycemic comas. Electro convulsive therapy, often called electro shock, and libotomy were also attempts to treat mental illness through the brain. These therapies were
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