Ugo Cerletti (September 26, 1877 - July 25, 1963) was an Italian neurologist. He was born in Conegliano, in the region of Veneto, Italy, on September 26, 1877. He studied Medicine at Rome and Turin, later specializing in neurology and neuropsychiatry. He studied with the most eminent neurologists of his time, first in Paris, France, with Pierre Marie and Dupré, then in Munich, Germany, with Emil Kraepelin (the "father" of modern scientific psychiatry) and Alois Alzheimer (the discoverer of senile dementia, which today bears his name); and in Heidelberg, with Franz Nissl, a neuropathologist. Ugo Cerletti File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... September 26 is the 269th day of the year (270th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 96 days remaining. ... 1877 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... July 25 is the 206th day (207th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 159 days remaining. ... 1963 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Neurology is the branch of medicine that deals with the nervous system and disorders affecting it. ... Veneto is a region in northeastern Italy, bordering on Lombardy, Trentino-South Tyrol, Austria, Friuli Venezia Giulia, and Emilia-Romagna, between the Alps and the Adriatic Sea. ... September 26 is the 269th day of the year (270th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 96 days remaining. ... 1877 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Medicine is a branch of health science concerned with maintaining health and restoring it by treating disease. ... Location within Italy The Roman Colosseum Rome (Italian and Latin: Roma) is the capital city of Italy and of its Latium region. ... Location Region Piedmont Province Turin Area   – Total   – Water 130 km&sup2 (50 mi²) ##.# km² (#.# mi²) #.##% Population   – Total (2002)   – Density 857,433 6,596/km² Time zone CET: UTC+1 Latitude Longitude   45°04′ N 7°40′ E1. ... Neurology is the branch of medicine that deals with the nervous system and disorders affecting it. ... The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... Munich: Frauenkirche and Town Hall steeple Munich (German: München (pronounced listen) is the state capital of the German Bundesland of Bavaria. ... Emil Kraepelin (February 15, 1856- October 7, 1926) was a psychiatrist who attempted to create a synthesis of the hundreds of mental disorders classified by the 19th century, grouping diseases together based on classification of common patterns of symptoms, rather than by simple similarity of major symptoms in the manner... Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that studies and treats mental and emotional disorders (see mental illness). ... Alois Alzheimer Alois Alzheimer (June 14, 1864 - December 19, 1915), a German neurologist, was a colleague of Emil Kraepelin who first identified the symptoms of what is now known as Alzheimers Disease. ... Alzheimers disease (AD) or senile dementia of Alzheimers type is a neurodegenerative disease which results in a loss of mental functions due to the deterioration of brain tissue. ... Map of Germany showing Heidelberg Castle of Heidelberg pictured from the Old Bridge Heidelberg (halfway between Stuttgart and Frankfurt) is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. ... Franz Nissl Franz Nissl (1860-1919) was born in Frankenthal in the Bavarian Palatinate, the son of Theodor Nissl and Maria Haas. ...

After his studies, he was appointed head of the Neurobiological Institute, at the Mental Institute of Milan. In 1924 he was given a lecturing post in Neuropsychiatry in Bari; then, in 1928, he took over the post of Prof. Enrico Morselli, at the University of Genoa. Finally, in 1935, he became the Chair of the Department of Mental and Neurological Diseases at the University of Rome, where he developed electroconvulsive therapy for the treatment of several kinds of mental disorders, a discovery which made him world-famous. Location within Italy Piazza della Scala Milan (Italian: Milano; Milanese dialect: Milán) is the main city in northern Italy, and is located in the plains of Lombardy, the most populated and developed of Italian regions. ... Location within Italy Bari is the second largest continental city of Southern Italy, with a population of 326,201 (2001) along 116 sq. ... The University of Genoa (Università degli Studi di Genova in Italian or UniGe) is one of the larger universities in Italy. ... There is no institution called the University of Rome, but there are several universities in Rome: University of Rome La Sapienza University of Rome Tor Vergata University of Roma Tre This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Electroconvulsive therapy, also known as electroshock or ECT, is a controversial type of psychiatric shock therapy involving the induction of an artificial seizure in a patient by passing electricity through the brain. ... The Scream, the famous painting commonly thought of as depicting the experience of mental illness. ...

Cerletti came to the first use of electroshock for therapeutic purposes in human beings by way of his experiments with animals on the neuropathological consequences of repeated epilepsy attacks. In Genoa, and later in Rome, he used a electroshock apparatus to provoke repeatable, reliable epileptic fits in dogs and other animals. The idea to use ECT in humans came first to him by watching pigs being anesthetised with electroshock before being butchered, in Rome. Furthermore, since 1935, metrazol, an epileptogenic drug, and insulin, a hormone, were in wide use in many countries to treat schizophrenics, with great success. This approach was based on Nobel winner Julius Wagner-Jauregg's research on the use of malaria-induced convulsions to treat some nervous and mental disorders, such as the general paresis of the insane, caused by neural syphilis, as well as on Ladislas J. Meduna's theory that schizophrenia and epilepsy were antagonistic, which eventually led, in the same period, to institute insulin-coma therapy in psychiatry, by Manfred Sakel, in 1933. Epilepsy (often referred to as a seizure disorder) is a chronic neurological condition characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures. ... Binomial name Sus scrofa Linnaeus, 1758 The domestic pig is usually given the scientific name Sus scrofa, though some authors call it , reserving for the wild boar. ... Cetacaine, a topical anesthetic Anesthesia (AE), also anaesthesia (BE), is the process of blocking the perception of pain and other sensations. ... Metrazol is the commercial trademark of pentamethylenetetrazol, or pentylenetetrazol (PTZ), a drug used as a circulatory and respiratory stimulant (another commercial name is Cardiazol). ... Epilepsy (often referred to as a seizure disorder) is a chronic neurological condition characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures. ... The structure of insulin Red: carbon; green: oxygen; blue: nitrogen; pink: sulfur. ... Schizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis denoting a persistent, often chronic, mental illness variously affecting behavior, thinking, and emotion. ... Julius Wagner-Jauregg was born on March 7th, 1857, in Wels, Austria. ... Red blood cell infected with Malaria (Italian: bad air; formerly called ague or marsh fever in English) is an infectious disease which in humans causes about 500 million infections and 2 million deaths annually, mainly in the tropics and sub-Saharan Africa. ... During the nineteenth century general paresis of the insane emerged as a new psychiatric disorder which was extremely common and completely devastating. ... Depression-era U.S. poster advocating early syphilis treatment Syphilis (historically called lues) is a sexually transmitted disease (STD) that is caused by a spirochaete bacterium, Treponema pallidum. ... Ladislas Joseph Meduna (1896-1964) was a Hungarian neurologist who discovered the first effective drugs for the treatment of schizophrenia. ... Manfred Joshua Sakel, Polish neurophysiologist and psychiatrist, was born on June 6, 1900, in Nadvorna, in the former Austria-Hungary Empire (now Ukraine). ...

Cerletti first used ECT in a human patient, a diagnosed schizophrenic with delusions, hallucinations and confusion, in April 1938, in collaboration with Lucio Bini. A series of electroshocks were able to return the patient to a normal state of mind. Thereafter, in the suceeding years, Cerletti and his coworkers experimented with thousands of electroshocks in hundreds of animals and patients, and were able to determine its usefulness and safety in clinical practice, with several indications, such as in acute schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness, major depression episodes, etc. His work was very influential, and ECT quickly spread out as a therapeutic procedure all over the world. A delusion is commonly defined as a false belief, and is used in everyday language to describe a belief that is either false, fanciful or derived from deception. ... A hallucination is a false sensory perception in the absence of an external stimulus, as distinct from an illusion, which is a misperception of an external stimulus. ... Lucio Bini (1908-1964) was an Italian psychiatrist and professor at the University of Rome, Italy. ... Manic depression, with its two principal sub-types, bipolar disorder and major depression, was first clinically described near the end of the 19th century by psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, who published his account of the disease in his Textbook of Psychiatry. ... In ordinary conversation, nearly any mood with some element of sadness may be called depressed. However, for depression to be termed clinical depression it must reach criteria which are generally accepted by clinicians; it is more than just a temporary state of sadness. ...

In his long activity as a psychiatrist and neurologist, Cerletti published 113 original papers, about the pathology of senile plaques in Alzheimer's disease, on the structure of neuroglia, the blood-brain barrier, syphilis, etc. In 1950, he received a honorary degree by the Sorbonne (University of Paris), in addition to a long list of awards and degrees. Neuroglia cells of the brain shown by Golgis method. ... The blood-brain barrier is a physical barrier between the blood vessels in the central nervous system, and the central nervous system itself. ... Depression-era U.S. poster advocating early syphilis treatment Syphilis (historically called lues) is a sexually transmitted disease (STD) that is caused by a spirochaete bacterium, Treponema pallidum. ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The Sorbonne today, from the same point of view The historic University of Paris (French: Université de Paris) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganized as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The historic University of Paris (French: Université de Paris) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganized as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ...

Cerletti died in Rome, on July 25, 1963. July 25 is the 206th day (207th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 159 days remaining. ... 1963 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

References

• Cerletti, U. (1940) L'Elettroshock. Rivista Sperimentale di Frenatria. Vol I, 209- 310.
• Baruk H - Professor Hugo Cerletti. Bull Acad Natl Med 1966 Nov 8;150(28):574-579
• Medea E - Ugo Cerletti. Arch Psicol Neurol Psichiatr 1966 May;27(3):198-202
• Kalinowsky LB - History of convulsive therapy. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1986;462:1-4.