Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 May 1937 — Page 12

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PAGE 12

INSULIN HAILED AS AID TO FIGHT INSANITY CASES

Doctor Learns ‘by Accident Extract Helps to Clear Up Mental Disease.

(Copyright. 1937. by Science Service) PITTSBURGH, May 19.—Insulin, the gland extract that makes life possible for thousands of persons suffering from diabetes, now promises to save other thousands from | the living death of insanity. The accidental discovery of the effect of this gland extract on the clouded minds of narcotic drug addicts and sufferers from schizophrenia (split-mind), widespread mental disease, was described by Dr. Man-, fred Sakel of Vienna, Austria, at the meeting here of the American Psychiatric Association. This treatment is being hailed as almost the first promising weapon of : attack on this centuries-old mental disease.

A morphine addict in a Vienna hospital, the story goes, was found | _ to be suffering from diabetes. He was given insulin for this condition. As sometimes happens with insulin treatment, he had an “insulin shock,” a state the reverse of diabetes in which the body uses up sugar too fast and the amount of sugar in the blood falls below normal level. Much to the doctor's surprise, when this patient recovered from the insulin shock, his mental condition was greatly improved. " Similar Results Reported

Other patients, who had no diabetes, but were suffering either from drug addiction or from mental dissase, were given large doses of insulin, to induce shock. In many of these, the mental condition also improved, apparently permanently. Similar experiences with the use of this new treatment for schizophrenia were reported here by American psychiatrists: Drs. Solomon Katzenelbogen, Herbert Harms and Dean A. Clarck of Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, Baltimore, and Spring Grove State Hospital, Md.; Drs. Joseph Wortis, Karl M. Bowman and Leo Orenstein, of Bellevue Hospital, New York, and Drs. G. Alexander Young, Richard M. Young and Louis G. Roucek of Omaha. : From a third to half the patients treated by this method showed improvement in their mental state which appears to be permanent, although the treatment is so new that it is not yet possible to say how long the improvement will last. In some cases |it has lasted for three years. The psychiatrists seem dgreed that the treatment is most successful in acute cases of schizophrenia in which the patients are young and have not been ill very long. Chronic cases do not seem to respond as well to the treatment.

It Has Its Danger ’

The treatment is® not without “danger. Insulin shock brings on hypoglycemia, a grave condition in “which there is less than normal sugar in the blood. This condition . occurs spontaneously in some persons who show symptoms that may be mistaken for mental dizease, Drs. Edwin J. Kepler and Frederick P. Moersch, of the Mayo Clinic reported. Hypoglvcemia leads rapidly to death, unless the sugar lack is promptly remedied. This may be done by injecting sugar into the veins or giving the patient sugar water to drink. When insulin shock -is induced to + treat mental disease, the resulting hypoglycemia or sugar lack is checked by giving sugar. The danger of this new mental diseage treatment is that the sugar may not be given soon enough. The Omaha physicians reported two deaths and two” other cases which nearly ended fatally in spite of efforts to bring the sugar level back to normal following the shock.

It’s Still Mystery

How or why insulin shock restores the sanity of the patients is still dn unsolved mystery. It may be that the shock itself jolts the mind back to normal, or it may be that the temporary change in the sugar level restores the body's intricate chemical processes to normal. Since no

Dance Head

HR 2 os ; The Continental Girls Athletic Association, of which Miss Margaret Haase is president, is to sponsor a tea dance in the Washington High School gymnasium Thursday from 5 to 7 p. m.

SHORTRIDGE GROUP SEEKS ESSAY PRIZE

Eight members of the Shortridge High School chapter of the National Honor Society have entered the city-wide Lucius B. Seift Memorial Essay Contest. They are Lani Carr, Mary Jane Carr, Jeanne Davis, James Hudson, Doris Jane Koning,” Danna Lansley, Betty Rose Martin, and Mar-

garet Wohlgemuth. Contest judges are Miss Nora Thomas, Miss Helen Frazee, and Miss Dorothy Peterson, members of the school faculty.

nia, no one can yet say why the treatment remedies the condition in certain cases. But the treatment itself may give a clue that will lead to solution of the case of the disease. That in turn should lead | to even greater success with the treatment since it will show how | the treatment can be modified and made specific—a “sure cure,” perhaps. : Schizophrenia is the term covering a large group of mental diseases or psychoses. It is also known as dementia praecox. The fundamented basis of personality consists of a | person’s mood and emotions. Unity | and harmony of emotions and as- | sociation of ideas is so usual that it is almost inconceivable that there should be any lack of such agreement. But this sort of mental! disease is characterized by a dis- | order of feeling and thinking and a consequent disturbance of the | patient’s relations to the outer world. It is this state which insulin gives great promise of remedying.

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And BE SURE TO SEE

Lowell Thomas in “The Milk Parade” at Indiana Theater today or tomorrow, in connection with Jan Garber Stage Revue Plus “Man Who Found Himself.” A swell show for everybody.

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MILK CONTEST WINNERS are being notified by mail.

Sponsored by Dairy Farmers and Distributors.

one knows what causes-schizophre-

THE WHOLE

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