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Dr Manfred Sakel was an Austrian American neuropsychologist and psychiatrist credited for introducing insulin shock (or coma) therapy (IST) as a treatment for psychoses, especially schizophrenia (1927). He conceived the idea shortly after graduating in medicine at the University of Vienna (1925) while working as an internist at the Lichterfelde Sanatorium in Berlin. Sakel allegedly induced prolonged convulsions and superficial coma in a morphine addict from an accidental overdose of insulin after which the patient woke with enriched mental clarity and a diminution of withdrawal symptoms (i.e. tremors, vomiting and opiate craving). Later Sakel coined the method ‘Sakel's technique’. He theorised that insulin antagonised the neuronal effects of the products of the adrenal cortex which (he quoted) ‘will force [the nerve cell] to conserve functional energy and store...