Contextualizebeta

Edison's medicine

noun

Etymology

After Thomas Edison (1847–1931), American inventor who pioneered applications of electricity. Chosen for the near-rhyme.

Definitions

  1. Electroconvulsive therapy.

    • They used to call it "Edison's medicine" or, with a touch of gallows humor, a "Georgia Power cocktail" — the practice of hooking mentally troubled patients up to an electrical current and jolting them until they went into convulsions.
    • The use of electroshock as mind-erasing punishment was dramatized in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and that negative portrayal almost served as a death knell for a practice derided as "Edison's medicine."
    • So this woman who has had Edison's medicine (electroshock treatment) and medication, and who has the good fortune to have such a "sister" as Ginger, has lost everything.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for Edison's medicine. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA