"The evaluation of the merits of medical treatments for madness has always been a calculation made by doctors and, to a certain extent, by society as a whole. Does the treatment provide a method for managing disturbed people? That is the usual bottom line. The patient's subjective response to the treatment--does it help the patient feel better or think more clearly?--simply doesn't count in that evaluation. The "mad," in fact, are dismissed as unreliable witnesses. How can a person crazy in mind possibly appreciate whether a treatment--be it Rush's gyrator, a wet pack, gastrointestinal surgery, metrazol convulsive therapy, electroshock, or a neuroleptic--has helped? Yet to the person so treated, the subjective experience is everything."