Burdick Sine-O-Tron

I love shots of old machinery like this.

Ah, it would be used in experiments in stimulating muscles after death...In the hopes of being able to do that to living patients with paralysis, and for various other medical reasons..

Thats really filthy but it's interesting

I'd be curious to know what's missing
from the top-center position.
My gut feeling is a voltmeter or something
similar.

I'm with Frida on this: I enjoy seeing machinery
and similar devices from the archives.

wonder if this company is still in business and if they are, does their machinery still look this creepy?

I'm not sure if they are still in business but a lot of things looked creepy back then. Look at those old heaters that hang from the ceiling. Those are real creepy. Newer things don't usually look as creepy but often look cheap

an early model defibrillator?

Darn, I thought it was one of Lynnie's torture machines.

=8-o

Soon I'll be needing one of these just to get me out of bed in the morning. ;o)

it loks like it threw up its insides

I thought it was my old reel-to-reel.
Sigh...............how I long for the old days....

No i was getting kinda excited about a possible panic button sighting. I was about to panic...

It's a good contrast comparing this 50's style machine with the digital ones they advertise in their website now.

you should make a museum - even if its just with pictures in it... great stuff motts!

remarkable....

It's kind of sad the way old equipment just gets abandoned.

I agree Jeanette, it should be preserved.

This kind of equipment was common in that period for ECT treatment, or Elctro Convulsive Theropy ( http://en.wikipedia.or...roconvulsive_therapy ). In the early days it was used rather alot and for nearly everything, seen as the wonder cure in the psych field. The missing instrament , may have been a volt meter, but more likely it was an occiliscope.

LOVE old equipment shots.It gives us an idea of how peple were medical gunie pigs so to speak. I can't help but to think that after her last treatment we will never know where the will is.

tourture masquerading as medicene

Erus is quite correct - this machine was used for ECT and the missing component is an oscilloscope.

Nothing like a little electro~shock therapy to set you straight !

I hate to tell you this but ECT is still in use. Though it might be a little different than it was before. The patients are under sedation or anestesia during the proceedure and are given muscle relaxants. Their brains are then zapped into convulsions. I have a few friends that have had this sort of treatment. While it is used when medications fail, it actually can be effective but can cause memory loss. They don't just get the treatment once it is a series of treatments before it is complete. Might actually be the one treatment that did have some theraputic benefit but was used far too often and inhumanely at first without anestesia or muscle relaxants.

It is an oscilloscope for measuring the output of soap dispensors, aka (Neat little lamps)

It looks like an old electroshop therepy machine.

I meant electroshock therepy.

Almost looked like a vintage casset player.

It doesn't matter what it is or what it does, it just looks so cool. =8-)

It's one of those with the thing missing.

yeah, they still do electroshock. Nobody knows what causes depression except for a depressing existence, and since that can't be changed, they make do with biological theories about neurochemical systems and when the prozac fails, they turn on the juice. It is said to revitalize you when you come to, but it wears off. Why not just plug you into an extension cord? Shame they can't just give you some good drugs if they're going to all that trouble.

Way back when someone noticed that epileptics did not become ill with schizophrenia. So if epileptics had convulsions, then giving schizophrenics convolutions might bring them out of it--that was the rationale. Like the whole history (including today) of psychiatry, no one really knows how the brain works. It is trial and error, and then no one knows what the long term effects are. Some people get over schizophrenia on their own, so for any new treatment, someone is going to be "cured" by it, then it was the go-to treatment and a if some is good more is better attitude crept in, hence the series of shocks over a period of days.

Turns out it does not work for schizophrenia, but as others have said is today a last-ditch voluntary treatment for serious depression. Have an in-law that had it years ago--suicidal depression ran in her family.

If it is a muscle stimulation machine as Motts says then it is probably a precursor to the TENS unit (Trancutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) that is used in physical therapy and given to athletes and people wiht constant pain.
I can see that it may also be a ECT machine. In fact it is logical that both may have come from the same research.
As for ECT it is a basically a noninvasive lobotomy. It is just as random and unpredictable and they know just as little about what is going on when they do it as they did about lobotomy's. The only way they can determine anything about either "treatment" is based on how the victim behaves after the fact.
ECT has never stopped in some countries and is making a come back in the US.

I had it done to me as a small boy age 5-7 as part of a regimen of torture and abuse while in protective custody ,and then again at the end with drugs to make me forget all the abuse and that I was ECT'd.
As you see I have remembered, and I can tell you that ECT is entirely harmful and does not do anyone any good in spite of what they might imagine. You'll see if you look it up that many victims of lobotomy said they were better too. And while it made me forget the abuse the damage that abuse causes was not removed with the memories so I had to live my life thinking that all the symptoms of abuse were my personal defects that I was born with. Not knowing why I had the problems I did and nothing anyone offered had any effect as it could never address the issues that ware hidden from me.

You may think you were helped but I assure you that you weren't the only thing that happened is that your brain was killed off in random sections and other parts were so damaged that the synapses cannot work properly. You'll sense what is there but not be able to get at it. You will think this is memory loss but it is not it is brain death and physically damaged synapses. .

Flushed,
I too experienced institutional abuse that left me with PTSD. Its fucked up that so many people want to bring them back (not that they still don't exist in many forms.)

It's fucked up that many people want to bring back the huge institutions with abusive employees, policies and procedures.