a treatment for schizophrenia, rarely used after 1960, in which hypoglycemia was induced by intramuscular injection of insulin to produce a temporary coma. Inductions might last for 15 to 60 minutes, and a full course of treatment typically involved numerous coma inductions over a given period. Also called coma therapy; insulin-coma therapy. [introduced in 1927 by Austrian-born U.S. psychiatrist Manfred J. Sakel (1900–1957)]