From the archive

The British Medical Bulletin (BMB) has an extensive archive dating back to 1943. Each quarter, the journal publishes a paper from that archive. This quarter, I thought it would be interesting to look at ‘On the place of physical treatment in Psychiatry’ that is written by Aubrey Lewis. This is an overview of some of the more hair-raising ‘shock treatments’ meted out to people with psychiatric disorders previously. He points out that any treatment should be ‘rational and their mode of action understood’. He quotes a number of studies which are in contradiction with each other, such as the use of insulin therapy in schizophrenia and frontal leucotomy in intractable disease. He makes the point that, with such variations in outcome, the treatment cannot be used. He makes the point that diagnostic criteria are more complex in psychiatry, making treatment comparisons difficult. The author, Sir Aubrey Julian Lewis, was the first professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, which is now part of King’s College, London. It has been said that the flowering of British psychiatry after World War ll can be attributed to three factors: a long humanitarian tradition, the NHS and Aubrey Lewis.