tranquilizer chair
a heavy wooden chair used in early psychiatry in which patients were strapped at the chest, abdomen, ankles, and knees, with their head inserted in a wooden box. This method of restraint was preferred to the straitjacket because it reduced the flow of blood to the head and did not interfere with bloodletting, one of the standard treatments of the time. [devised by U.S. physician and psychiatrist Benjamin Rush (1745–1813)]