Lucio Bini 's Electroconvulsive therapy records

Abstract: Lucio Bini's papers largely consist of incoming handwritten and typed correspondence; blueprints and related documenation for electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) equipment, as well as product details for selling equipment and records related to international patents; research notes from early experiments on animals (dogs) and from tracking early patients undergoing electroshock therapy; newspaper clippings; photographs (both in color and black and white); and other miscellaneous materials. Correspondents include Lothar Kalinowsky and other professional colleagues, as well as some patients. The second box of materials are all xeroxed photocopies from Bini's materials and is not well organized. Also includes correspondence related to the acquisition of Bini's papers by the Menninger Foundation.

Summary: Lucio Bini's papers, largely, consist of incoming handwritten and typed correspondence; blueprints and related documentation for electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) equipment. They also include product information for selling equipment, records related to international patents, research notes from early experiments on animals (dogs), and from tracking early patients undergoing electroshock therapy. Newspaper clippings, photographs (both in color and black and white), and other miscellaneous materials are available. Correspondents include Lothar Kalinowsky and other professional colleagues, as well as some patients. The second box of materials are all xeroxed photocopies from Bini's materials and is not well organized. The materials also include correspondence related to the acquisition of Bini's papers by the Menninger Foundation.

Language note: Italian, German, English, French.

Biog. Sketch (Full): Lucio Bini (1908-1964), a clinician and co-author of a leading Italian textbook on psychiatry, assisted Ugo Cerletti, a neuropathologist of Genoa, Italy, in experimental electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). In 1938, the two carried out the first ECT of a schizophrenic patient successfully, a procedure which would replace the pharmacological induction of epileptic seizures. Subsequently this treatment also proved useful in the treatment of depression. Bini and Cerletti's findings were first put into practice in the United States at Pennsylvania Hospital in 1940.