Shocking & Choking

Most psychiatrists hold that the way to treat the minor mental ills classified as psychoneuroses* is by mental means alone. The University of Illinois' Dr. Ladislas Joseph Meduna has now published an outspoken dissenting opinion. Psychoneuroses, he declares, are caused by something wrong in the physical working of the brain's nerve cells and can be cured by physical means.

Sniff the Gas. In Carbon Dioxide Therapy (Charles C. Thomas; $5), Psychiatrist Meduna claims to have a possible answer: a few sniffs of the gas which puts the bubbles in soda water. This, according to Dr. Meduna, may make psychoanalysis unnecessary. And, he contends, it is wonderfully effective for anxiety, inferiority complexes and homosexuality, or such psychosomatic complaints as spastic colon, frigidity, impotence and stuttering.

In his native Budapest, Dr. von Meduna was one of the first to use shock treatment (with the drug Metrazol) for psychoses. He tried carbon dioxide with no success. Soon after he settled in Chicago in 1939 (and dropped the "von"), Dr. Meduna decided that psychoses were too deep-seated to reach with carbon dioxide. But neuroses offered him a promising field.

In the Meduna method, the patient gets a mixture of 70% oxygen and 30% carbon dioxide/- through an ordinary anesthetic mask. After a dozen whiffs (on the average), the patient loses consciousness. He usually sweats and begins to struggle.

See the Stars. After 30 to 50 respirations his legs move as if he were riding a bicycle. Both arms and legs may move, as if the patient were trying to run on all fours. He may see whole constellations of stars, or orange suns, and have vivid dreams. The patient does not, as in psychoanalysis, prattle endlessly about his past. Each treatment lasts only five or six minutes. The patient may get as many as a hundred of them, gradually becoming more relaxed.

Dr. Meduna, who claims 68% success, explains how he thinks it works: in neurotics, the nerve cells are sensitive to abnormally small electric currents, so that they react oftener than they should, or else they react with abnormal severity to ordinary currents. He believes that carbon dioxide reacts in the cells to restore a more normal threshold of sensitivity.

Even at Illinois' College of Medicine, Dr. Meduna's theory and practice are not yet generally accepted. Sniffed Colleague Franz Alexander: "Meduna is merely choking, instead of shocking, his patients back to health." But if Gasman Meduna's theory pans out, Psychoanalyst Alexander may be out of business.

*Not to be confused with psychoses, the more severe mental ills for which shock therapy or brain surgery are often used.

/-Composition of ordinary air by volume: 78.03% nitrogen, 20.98% oxygen, .94% argon, .03% carbon dioxide, .02% other gases.

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