Ladislas Joseph Meduna

Life & Legacy

Ladislas Joseph Meduna (27 March 1896 – 31 October 1964) was a Hungarian neuropathologist and neuropsychiatrist who initiated convulsive treatment, the repeated induction of grand mal seizures, as a treatment of psychosis. Observing the high concentration of glia in post-mortem brains of patients with epilepsy and a paucity in those with schizophrenia, he proposed that schizophrenia might be treated by inducing "epileptic" seizures. Thus, chemically induced seizures became the electroconvulsive therapy that is now in worldwide use.
With the rise of Nazism in Europe, he emigrated to Chicago in 1939. In studies with American scientists, Meduna explored carbon dioxide therapy for depression and anxiety and described oneirophrenia as a treatable psychiatric illness.