Ladislas Joseph Meduna

Ladislas Joseph Meduna 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.