A theoretical device, referred to as a Katzenklavier (or ‘Cat Piano’), would help establish psychiatry as a modern discipline in 19-century Germany. The Katzenklavier would have the cats “in a row with their tails stretched behind them. And a keyboard fitted out with sharpened nails would be set over them. The struck cats would provide the sound. A fugue played on this instrument—when the ill person is so placed that he cannot miss the expression on their faces and the play of these animals—must bring Lot’s wife herself from her fixed state into conscious awareness,” as described by Robert J. Richards.