ABSTRACT
This chapter examines new somatic treatments that were introduced between the two world wars: the Great war and World War II, it is a story of the use of rough methods in tough times. It focuses on four most widely used treatments: insulin coma therapy, convulsive shock therapy, electroconvulsive therapy and psychosurgery. Insulin coma therapy was widely regarded as a glimmer of hope in the therapeutic darkness of mental medicine, and it was adopted with great enthusiasm, although there were also sceptics who preferred the psychological approach to the disordered mind. The first so-called psychosurgical operations were conducted in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Early gynaecologists in particular attempted to cure nervous illnesses through surgical operations, mainly on women, whose illnesses the medical authorities readily attributed to the 'female nervous temperament'. The golden age of lobotomy was the approximately ten-year period between the end of World War II and the introduction of modern psychiatric drugs in the mid-1950s.
