Schizophrenia.

Manfred Sakel introduced insulin shock therapy in 1927, only two years after his graduation from medical school. He began his work with drug addicts and quickly extended the therapy to schizophrenics. When he reported that this most refractory of psychoses was favorably influenced by insulin therapy, he was greeted with skepticism and opposition. However, Poetzl, Director of the Vienna Psychiatric Clinic, took Sakel under his wing and gave him the clinical facilities to develop his method of treatment. In relatively few years insulin shock therapy was accepted all over the world as the treatment of choice for schizophrenia. It furnished the impetus for the introduction of Metrazol and electric convulsive therapies for mental disorder It may also be given credit for facilitating the current upsurge of interest and activity in pharmacotherapy and biochemical concepts of psychosis.

In view of the tremendously important psychiatric developments which he initiated, Sakel's place as