Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3.11.
ECT brochure, cover page. Source: Science museum, london, BNI archive.
“great and desperate cures”—insulin shock, chemical shock, electroshock
(electroconvulsive therapy—ECT), and lobotomy—that arose in psychiatry in
the 1930s and had their heyday in the 1940s and early 1950s, the same period
as the first flush of cybernetics.
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And to put some more flesh on this connection, we should note that despite
his evident desire to “do science” as he had in his student days at Cambridge,
Walter continually found himself entangled with the concerns of the clinic.
During his brief stint in London, he wrote in a 1938 report to the Rockefeller
Foundation on his EEG work (1938, 16) that “the volume of clinical work
which I have been asked to undertake has grown to embarrassing propor-
tions. . . . These examinations are, of course, undertaken most willingly . . .
but the clerical and other routine work, to say nothing of the maintenance of
apparatus . . . take up so much time that little is left for breaking new ground.”
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Walter's later work on flicker (see below) also had a significant clinical ele-
ment. But more directly to the point here is that the newly established Burden
Neurological Institute took the lead in transplanting the new approaches to
psychiatry to Britain, claiming an impressive list of firsts, including the first
