2018 Talks:
Early Electroshock machine c.1940
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), formerly known as electroshock, is a treatment in which convulsive seizures are electrically induced in patients for therapeutic effect. Before these machines were tried, drugs and other methods to induce seizures were used as a means of treatment for severe depression and schizophrenia. Electroshock was first introduced in 1938 by two Italian neuropsychiatrists, and gained widespread use as a form of treatment in the 1940s and 1950s.
Today, ECT is most often used as a treatment for clinical depression that has not responded to other treatment. Exactly how it works is not known, but it can be effective. Contrary to movie images (especially ‘One Flew Over The Cockoo’s Nest’), ECT is now painless as it has been administered under anaesthetic and with muscle relaxants since the early 1950s. When this machine was first used, the patients might suffer a lot of pain, and risk broken long bones from the muscle spasms. The treatment has a side effect of inducing some memory loss, which is partly positive as patients often forget having the treatment.
The Doctor selects a suitable voltage range, adjusts the power dial and administers the shock via two probes, one either side of the patient’s head. It can be triggered by a hand or foot switch as the doctor prefers, selectable on the machine. The milliammeter provides feedback on the current delivered. Presumably the doctor administered a few lower voltage test shocks to begin with.
The Bedeque Area Historical Society recognizes the generosity of Dr. Lloyd Molyneaux, Bedeque’s local physician, in providing this machine for exhibit.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), formerly known as electroshock, is a treatment in which convulsive seizures are electrically induced in patients for therapeutic effect. Before these machines were tried, drugs and other methods to induce seizures were used as a means of treatment for severe depression and schizophrenia. Electroshock was first introduced in 1938 by two Italian neuropsychiatrists, and gained widespread use as a form of treatment in the 1940s and 1950s.
Today, ECT is most often used as a treatment for clinical depression that has not responded to other treatment. Exactly how it works is not known, but it can be effective. Contrary to movie images (especially ‘One Flew Over The Cockoo’s Nest’), ECT is now painless as it has been administered under anaesthetic and with muscle relaxants since the early 1950s. When this machine was first used, the patients might suffer a lot of pain, and risk broken long bones from the muscle spasms. The treatment has a side effect of inducing some memory loss, which is partly positive as patients often forget having the treatment.
The Doctor selects a suitable voltage range, adjusts the power dial and administers the shock via two probes, one either side of the patient’s head. It can be triggered by a hand or foot switch as the doctor prefers, selectable on the machine. The milliammeter provides feedback on the current delivered. Presumably the doctor administered a few lower voltage test shocks to begin with.
The Bedeque Area Historical Society recognizes the generosity of Dr. Lloyd Molyneaux, Bedeque’s local physician, in providing this machine for exhibit.
10 Feb 2014
Only a Little Brook
To modern eyes, this print may seem morbid in the extreme. It is a poem voiced by a dying girl in her mother’s arms. Such pictures, known as "mourning pieces", were very popular in the Victorian era. The death of Prince Albert in 1861, and Queen Victoria’s deep preoccupation with it, was one reason. What we often do not realize is that the Victorians had much more frequent experiences with the death of loved ones than we do.
The current mortality rate in Canada is about 0.5%; only about 5 children in every 1,000 will die before the age of 5 years, and PEI has a rate even lower than the national average. In 1920, the rate was about 10%, twenty times higher. Estimates from 1830 in Quebec put the rate at 33% - one in every three children born then would die before the age of 5. One of the later lines of the poem is a vision of Heaven showing the girl all of her playmates who died before her waiting to welcome her. Thus, the print was intended as a comfort to a family who may have suffered the very common loss of a child.
Not just death itself, but the nature of it in those times is unknown to most of us today. A bout of Scarlet Fever is treated with an antibiotic today; one pill every 6 hours, 4 days off school with a bit of a rash, and it’s gone. In the 1800’s an outbreak in a town might kill as many as 30% percent of the children. Scarlet fever is now known to be spread by inhalation, so isolation is routine, but it would have been difficult to achieve this in those days even if it had been known about. In many families, children slept two or three to a bed. General standards of health, sanitation and nutrition were much poorer then, so a disease was much more likely to be fatal to a child with already weak defenses against illness. A family might have one child come home with a rash on Monday, and have all four children dead by the end of the week. This is almost unimaginable to us today but not uncommon back then.
So, dear child, next time you complain about having to wash your hands before meals, or eat nasty vegetables or take yucky medicine, remember that they make you about a hundred times safer than you would have been when this picture was made.
To modern eyes, this print may seem morbid in the extreme. It is a poem voiced by a dying girl in her mother’s arms. Such pictures, known as "mourning pieces", were very popular in the Victorian era. The death of Prince Albert in 1861, and Queen Victoria’s deep preoccupation with it, was one reason. What we often do not realize is that the Victorians had much more frequent experiences with the death of loved ones than we do.
The current mortality rate in Canada is about 0.5%; only about 5 children in every 1,000 will die before the age of 5 years, and PEI has a rate even lower than the national average. In 1920, the rate was about 10%, twenty times higher. Estimates from 1830 in Quebec put the rate at 33% - one in every three children born then would die before the age of 5. One of the later lines of the poem is a vision of Heaven showing the girl all of her playmates who died before her waiting to welcome her. Thus, the print was intended as a comfort to a family who may have suffered the very common loss of a child.
Not just death itself, but the nature of it in those times is unknown to most of us today. A bout of Scarlet Fever is treated with an antibiotic today; one pill every 6 hours, 4 days off school with a bit of a rash, and it’s gone. In the 1800’s an outbreak in a town might kill as many as 30% percent of the children. Scarlet fever is now known to be spread by inhalation, so isolation is routine, but it would have been difficult to achieve this in those days even if it had been known about. In many families, children slept two or three to a bed. General standards of health, sanitation and nutrition were much poorer then, so a disease was much more likely to be fatal to a child with already weak defenses against illness. A family might have one child come home with a rash on Monday, and have all four children dead by the end of the week. This is almost unimaginable to us today but not uncommon back then.
So, dear child, next time you complain about having to wash your hands before meals, or eat nasty vegetables or take yucky medicine, remember that they make you about a hundred times safer than you would have been when this picture was made.
7 Feb 2014
Ebony wood sextant; with maker's name centrally and the angle scale (now warped), both inscribed on bone.
Ship's Sextant
This Ebony and Bone sextant was made by the firm of Spencer, Browning and Rust, sometime between 1784 and 1840. It is marked London, but the firm is known to have shipped sextants in component form to assemblers in Scotland and the United States. The case is lined with charts from the East Coast of England (Lowestoft to the River Humber). The practice of lining cases with out of date maps continues in the nautical and aviation worlds to this day, and indicates only that the case was probably lined somewhere in England.
The sextant belonged at some point to Capt. Merriman of the Brig ‘Shooting Star’, as this is handwritten inside the case. The ‘Shooting Star’ was not a naval vessel, so was probably a civilian cargo ship. An excerpt from the New York Times dated 27th January, 1867, reports the abandonment of the ‘Shooting Star’ on the 17th, and the safe landing at Newport, RI, of Capt. Allen and his crew by the Brig ‘Albatross’ who took them off. The ship was caught in a gale on the 12th, and obliged to cut away her masts. This was likely necessary due to a partial dismasting, after which the remainder would need to be cut away to avoid the loose parts holing the hull in the stormy seas. Unfortunately, removing the high masts makes a ship roll much more rapidly and with larger amplitude, so with the sea likely to have had significant waves for days afterwards, abandonment became the only option. This sextant, the chronometer, and the Ship’s log were probably the only items the Captain brought with him off the ship when it was abandoned. The ship’s hull may not have sunk immediately – some abandoned hulls were known to have drifted around the oceans for years, and led to many a ghostly tale!
So, how did this sextant end up on P.E.I.? It may have been assembled in the United States, or brought over by a British Captain. We can surmise that Capt. Merriman sold the sextant to the next Captain of the 'Shooting Star', either because he was retiring, or out of work afterwards, or trading up to a better (metal) sextant. Thus it remained with the ship and eventually came in the possession of Shooting Star’s last Captain. Captain Allen may have sold it in Newport, RI, or taken it to another ship. There are Allens on P.E.I., so it is also possible that he retired here.
Curiously, the provenance of this sextant was discovered on Jan 27th, 2014, exactly 147 years after it arrived in Newport, RI, and the author learned to use a sextant in Boston, Lincolnshire, which is just on the map used to line the case.
This Ebony and Bone sextant was made by the firm of Spencer, Browning and Rust, sometime between 1784 and 1840. It is marked London, but the firm is known to have shipped sextants in component form to assemblers in Scotland and the United States. The case is lined with charts from the East Coast of England (Lowestoft to the River Humber). The practice of lining cases with out of date maps continues in the nautical and aviation worlds to this day, and indicates only that the case was probably lined somewhere in England.
The sextant belonged at some point to Capt. Merriman of the Brig ‘Shooting Star’, as this is handwritten inside the case. The ‘Shooting Star’ was not a naval vessel, so was probably a civilian cargo ship. An excerpt from the New York Times dated 27th January, 1867, reports the abandonment of the ‘Shooting Star’ on the 17th, and the safe landing at Newport, RI, of Capt. Allen and his crew by the Brig ‘Albatross’ who took them off. The ship was caught in a gale on the 12th, and obliged to cut away her masts. This was likely necessary due to a partial dismasting, after which the remainder would need to be cut away to avoid the loose parts holing the hull in the stormy seas. Unfortunately, removing the high masts makes a ship roll much more rapidly and with larger amplitude, so with the sea likely to have had significant waves for days afterwards, abandonment became the only option. This sextant, the chronometer, and the Ship’s log were probably the only items the Captain brought with him off the ship when it was abandoned. The ship’s hull may not have sunk immediately – some abandoned hulls were known to have drifted around the oceans for years, and led to many a ghostly tale!
So, how did this sextant end up on P.E.I.? It may have been assembled in the United States, or brought over by a British Captain. We can surmise that Capt. Merriman sold the sextant to the next Captain of the 'Shooting Star', either because he was retiring, or out of work afterwards, or trading up to a better (metal) sextant. Thus it remained with the ship and eventually came in the possession of Shooting Star’s last Captain. Captain Allen may have sold it in Newport, RI, or taken it to another ship. There are Allens on P.E.I., so it is also possible that he retired here.
Curiously, the provenance of this sextant was discovered on Jan 27th, 2014, exactly 147 years after it arrived in Newport, RI, and the author learned to use a sextant in Boston, Lincolnshire, which is just on the map used to line the case.
