edison's medicine
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.21 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "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."
Etymology
After Thomas Edison (1847–1931), American inventor who pioneered applications of electricity. Chosen for the near-rhyme.