A propos of last week's antidepressants blogging, this is a pretty interesting talk about electroshock therapy by a surgeon who went through it himself. One of the things it highlights is that one of the main ways in which treatments for depression succeed simply by giving the patient hope that they can stop being depressed. That's not the only thing it does--the placebo effect wears off, and the effects of electroshock therapy and Prozac don't. But it seems to be a big part of it.
The other, less happy discovery is that they were planning to give him a pre-frontal lobotomy in the late 1970's before the electroshock rescued him from depression. I had been under the impression that the procedure was already on its way out when novelists took the subject up in the early 1960's, but apparently not.
It's not like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. More info at link.
Actually watched this. Not good times.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lobotomist/program/
Notice the huge blooper in the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest scene? The people giving Jack Nicholson's character the electric shocks were holding him down, without wearing any sort of insulated gloves. They would've gotten zapped too!
As for the Nuland talk, it seems as if there's something a bit "off" in his mannerisms and way of speaking. I don't know whether it's a side effect of the electric shocks or a result of the underlying condition.
The people giving Jack Nicholson's character the electric shocks were holding him down, without wearing any sort of insulated gloves. They would've gotten zapped too!
I don't remember that particular scene, but the electrical path would be from one electrode to the other. The only person who will be shocked is the one making contact with both electrodes.
The reason you can get shocked when someone else is touching a live wire is that the electrical system has one of its terminals permanenly referenced to the ground. The person being electrocuted is completing a path between the live wire and the earth, and you will create a second path if you make direct contact with them.
Normally, this is done as a safety feature, to prevent a short circuit to ground from persisting undetected. In situations where it is expressly undesirable, such as certain types of patient healthcare equipment used in hospitals, a special isolating power supply is connected between the wall outlet and the machine.
Here's a touching story about someone who had a lobotomy.