One very sad case was that of Senator Thomas Eagleton, chosen as a running mate by George McGovern, the Democratic Party’s nominee for President in 1972. Within a week, disaster struck: when reports of Eagleton’s hospitalizations threatened to break in the press, the campaign came forward and admitted to Eagleton’s treatments for exhaustion. Eventually, reports of alcoholism popped up and Eagleton admitted to having had multiple treatments of ECT. Kenneth R. Crispell and Carlos F. Gomez painted a stark portrait of the Eagleton problem in their 1988 book Hidden Illness in the White House: “had McGovern been elected and had he subsequently died in office, Eagleton would have been his constitutionally designated successor. The image of a decompensated Thomas Eagleton in charge of the nuclear arsenal – irrespective of how sophisticated and compassionate the voters might have been – was a frightening one that could not be easily repressed” (6-7). We did survive the Nixon years (and his alcoholism is now well-known), but was Eagleton's ECT any less disabling mentally? That's not a rhetorical question--I'd really like to know how ECT's effects compare with other treatments and drug and alcohol abuse.