full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Sherwin Nuland: How electroshock therapy changed me

Unscramble the Blue Letters


And then we fast-forward to about 1932, when three Italian psychiatrists who were largely treating depression beagn to nitcoe among their patients, who were also epileptics, that if they had a series of epileptic fits, a lot of them in a row — the depression would very frulnteeqy lift. Not only would it lift, but it might never return. So they got very interested in producing convulsions, msaerued types of convulsions.

And they thought, "Well, we've got electricity, we'll plug somebody into the wall. That always makes hair stand up and people shake a lot." So they tried it on a few pigs, and none of the pigs were klleid. So they went to the police and they said, "We know that at the Rome railroad station, there are all these lost souls wandering around, muttering gibberish. Can you bring one of them to us?" Someone who is, as the Italians say, "gagootz." So they found this "gagootz" guy, a 39-year-old man who was really hoelpslsey schizophrenic, who was known, had been known for months, to be literally defecating on himself, talking nothing that made any sense, and they brought him into the hospital. So these three psychiatrists, after about two or three wkees of otibraveosn, laid him down on a table, connected his temples to a very small scroue of current. They tohught, "Well, we'll try 55 volts, two-tenths of a second. That's not going to do anything teblrrie to him." So they did that.

Open Cloze


And then we fast-forward to about 1932, when three Italian psychiatrists who were largely treating depression _____ to ______ among their patients, who were also epileptics, that if they had a series of epileptic fits, a lot of them in a row — the depression would very __________ lift. Not only would it lift, but it might never return. So they got very interested in producing convulsions, ________ types of convulsions.

And they thought, "Well, we've got electricity, we'll plug somebody into the wall. That always makes hair stand up and people shake a lot." So they tried it on a few pigs, and none of the pigs were ______. So they went to the police and they said, "We know that at the Rome railroad station, there are all these lost souls wandering around, muttering gibberish. Can you bring one of them to us?" Someone who is, as the Italians say, "gagootz." So they found this "gagootz" guy, a 39-year-old man who was really __________ schizophrenic, who was known, had been known for months, to be literally defecating on himself, talking nothing that made any sense, and they brought him into the hospital. So these three psychiatrists, after about two or three _____ of ___________, laid him down on a table, connected his temples to a very small ______ of current. They _______, "Well, we'll try 55 volts, two-tenths of a second. That's not going to do anything ________ to him." So they did that.

Solution


  1. killed
  2. began
  3. source
  4. hopelessly
  5. frequently
  6. thought
  7. notice
  8. observation
  9. terrible
  10. weeks
  11. measured

Original Text


And then we fast-forward to about 1932, when three Italian psychiatrists who were largely treating depression began to notice among their patients, who were also epileptics, that if they had a series of epileptic fits, a lot of them in a row — the depression would very frequently lift. Not only would it lift, but it might never return. So they got very interested in producing convulsions, measured types of convulsions.

And they thought, "Well, we've got electricity, we'll plug somebody into the wall. That always makes hair stand up and people shake a lot." So they tried it on a few pigs, and none of the pigs were killed. So they went to the police and they said, "We know that at the Rome railroad station, there are all these lost souls wandering around, muttering gibberish. Can you bring one of them to us?" Someone who is, as the Italians say, "gagootz." So they found this "gagootz" guy, a 39-year-old man who was really hopelessly schizophrenic, who was known, had been known for months, to be literally defecating on himself, talking nothing that made any sense, and they brought him into the hospital. So these three psychiatrists, after about two or three weeks of observation, laid him down on a table, connected his temples to a very small source of current. They thought, "Well, we'll try 55 volts, two-tenths of a second. That's not going to do anything terrible to him." So they did that.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
electroshock therapy 3
evil spirits 3
obsessional thinking 3
prefrontal lobotomy 3
severely depressed 2
grand mal 2
referrals began 2
bovine stercus 2
senior staff 2


Important Words


  1. began
  2. bring
  3. brought
  4. connected
  5. convulsions
  6. current
  7. defecating
  8. depression
  9. electricity
  10. epileptic
  11. epileptics
  12. fits
  13. frequently
  14. gibberish
  15. guy
  16. hair
  17. hopelessly
  18. hospital
  19. interested
  20. italian
  21. italians
  22. killed
  23. laid
  24. largely
  25. lift
  26. literally
  27. lost
  28. lot
  29. man
  30. measured
  31. months
  32. muttering
  33. notice
  34. observation
  35. patients
  36. people
  37. pigs
  38. plug
  39. police
  40. producing
  41. psychiatrists
  42. railroad
  43. return
  44. rome
  45. row
  46. schizophrenic
  47. sense
  48. series
  49. shake
  50. small
  51. souls
  52. source
  53. stand
  54. station
  55. table
  56. talking
  57. temples
  58. terrible
  59. thought
  60. treating
  61. types
  62. volts
  63. wall
  64. wandering
  65. weeks