A recent editorial in the British Journal of Psychiatry celebrates 75 years of convulsive therapy, beginning with the work of Hungarian psychiatrist Laszlo Meduna. It reports that “despite the lack of evidence at this stage of therapeutic benefits, Meduna carried on with convulsive therapy”, and that his “persistence was admirable” (Gazdag et al., 2009). The authors conclude that “ECT has saved and significantly improved the lives of tens of thousands of patients since the 1930s”.