Cerletti, Ugo

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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b. 26 September 1877 Treviso, Italy

d. 25 July 1963 Rome, Italy

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Italian psychiatrist who was the originator, with L.Bini, of electroconvulsive therapy for severe psychiatric disorders.

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Cerletti qualified in medicine at the University of Turin in 1901. Following some years as an assistant in the psychiatric clinic, during which he demonstrated the presence of spirochaetes in the brain of syphylitics, he was appointed in 1919 Director of the Istituto Neurologica A.Varga in Milan. In 1924 he moved to the University of Bari, and then in 1928 to the faculty of medicine in Genoa.

In 1935 he assumed the directorship of the clinic for mental and nervous diseases in the University of Rome, and it was there, following the precedent of the treatment of mania, depression and schizophrenia by insulin or cardiazol shock, that Cerletti and Bini, who assisted with the apparatus, administered electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to their first patient in April 1935. The results appeared to be at least comparable with the other agents, and although the rationale of the treatment has never been fully clarified it gained a wide degree of acceptance for many years, even up to the 1990s.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

President, Italian Psychiatric Society 1946–59. Honorary degrees Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro and Montréal. Gold Medal of Public Health 1953.

Bibliography

1940, "L'Elletroshock", Riv.spir. et freniatra 64 (monograph). 1938, "L'Elletroshock", Arch. Gen. Neurolk Psychat. Psiconal 19.

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