Freeman believed that cutting certain nerves in the brain could eliminate excessive emotions and stabilize a personality. In fact, many people who underwent transorbital lobotomy seemed to lose their ability to feel intense emotions and seemed childish and less prone to worry. But the results were variable, according to Dr. Elliot Valenstein, a neurologist who wrote a book on the history of lobotomies: “Some patients seemed to improve, some became `vegetables,` some appeared unchanged, and some died.” In Ken Kesey`s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest, McMurphy undergoes a transorbital lobotomy. — Comments on the declaration of consent for a lobotomy operation via “Helaine Strauss”, the pseudonym of “patient in an elite private hospital”. [14] When lobotomy was invented, there were no good ways to treat mental illness, and people were “pretty desperate” for any kind of intervention, Lerner said. Nevertheless, the procedure has always been criticized, he added. Soon after, Germany and Japan also banned the procedure, but some European countries still practiced the lobotomy procedure. Sweden, in particular, performed more than 4,500 lobotomies between 1944 and 1966, long after the practice was widely frowned upon; Even worse, most of these cases were performed on women and children. In the United States, Freeman and Watts were well-known lobotomists. Freeman was an American psychiatrist and, with Watts, performed his first lobotomy in the United States in 1936. He recommended lobotomy to treat various conditions, including depression, neuroses, psychosis, crime, and even homosexuality. The Soviet Union officially banned the procedure in 1950[153] at Gilyarovsky`s initiative.

[154] Doctors in the Soviet Union concluded that the procedure “contradicts the principles of humanity” and that “lobotomy turns a mentally ill person into an idiot.” [147] By the 1970s, many countries had banned the procedure, as had several U.S. states. [155] Moniz`s first lobotomy procedures involved drilling a hole in the skull and injecting ethanol into the brain to destroy fibers connecting the frontal lobe to other parts of the brain. Later, Moniz developed a surgical instrument called a leucotoma, which contains a loop of retractable wire that, when turned, cuts a circular lesion in brain tissue. Moniz began his experiments with leukotomy only three months after Congress reinforced the apparent cause-and-effect relationship between Fulton and Jacobsen`s presentation and the Portuguese neurologist`s determination to operate on the frontal lobes. [68] As the author of this report, Fulton, sometimes called the father of the lobotomy, was later able to claim that the technique had its true origins in his laboratory. [69] Harvard neurologist Stanley Cobb confirmed this version of events, noting in his 1949 presidential address to the American Neurological Association that “rarely in the history of medicine has laboratory observation been so rapidly and dramatically translated into a therapeutic procedure.” However, Fulton`s report, written ten years after the events described, is not corroborated in the historical record and bears little resemblance to an earlier unpublished report he wrote on Congress. In this earlier account, he mentioned a fortuitous private exchange with Moniz, but it is likely that the official version of their public conversation he announced is completely unfounded. [70] In fact, Moniz claims to have conceived the operation some time before his trip to London in 1935, after confidently talking to his young colleague, the young neurosurgeon Pedro Almeida Lima, about his psychosurgical idea as early as 1933. [71] The traditional account exaggerates the importance of Fulton and Jacobsen in Moniz`s decision to initiate frontal lobe surgery, omitting the fact that detailed neurological research that emerged at the time suggested to Moniz and other neurologists and neurosurgeons that surgery on this part of the brain could cause significant personality changes in the mentally ill. [72] As early as 1944, an author in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Illness noted: “The history of the prefrontal lobotomy has been short and stormy.

His journey has been marked by both violent opposition and servile and unconditional acceptance. Beginning in 1947, Swedish psychiatrist Snorre Wohlfahrt evaluated early studies and reported that it is “clearly dangerous to leukotomize schizophrenics” and that lobotomy “is still too imperfect to use to launch a general offensive against chronic cases of mental disorders.” A lot of respect. [150] In 1948, Norbert Wiener, the author of Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and in the Machine, stated: “[P]lobotomy frontal. has recently become a certain fad, probably not unrelated to the fact that it facilitates the care of many patients. By the way, let me say that killing them makes it even easier to keep them. [151] While a small percentage of people would have shown improvement in their mental health status or no change, for many patients, lobotomy had negative effects on their personality, initiative, inhibitions, empathy and ability to function independently, Lerner said. The use of the method increased dramatically from the early 1940s to the 1950s; by 1951, nearly 20,000 lobotomies had been performed in the United States and proportionally more in the United Kingdom. [7] More lobotomies were performed on women than on men: A 1951 study found that nearly 60% of American patients who underwent lobotomy were women, and limited data show that 74% of lobotomies in Ontario were performed on female patients from 1948 to 1952.

[8] [9] [10] From the 1950s, the lobotomy was abandoned[11], first in the Soviet Union[12] and in Europe. [13] The term is derived from the Greek: λοβός lobos “rag” and τομή tomē “to cut, to cut”. The brain is an incredibly complex organ, and for most of modern history, it has defied serious scientific study. But the development of various technologies in recent decades that allow us to observe certain brain operations, collectively called brain scans, has greatly expanded our knowledge of the correlation between brain activity and different mental states and behaviors. Even before the first lobotomy, doctors manipulated the brain to change behavior. Beginning in the late 1880s, Swiss physician Gottlieb Burkhardt removed parts of the cerebral cortex from patients suffering from manic arousal, auditory hallucinations, and symptoms of schizophrenia. Burkhardt noted in an 1891 paper that surgery calmed his patients, although some suffered complications such as motor weakness, sensory aphasia (inability to understand speech, writing, or tactile symbols) and epilepsy, and one patient died five days after the procedure, researchers reported in 2008 in the Journal of Neurosurgery. In the United States, about 40,000 people were lobotomized and in England, 17,000 lobotomies were performed.

According to one estimate, a total of about 9,300 lobotomies were performed in the three Nordic countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. [140] Scandinavian hospitals lobotomize 2.5 times more people per capita than U.S. hospitals. [141] According to another estimate, Sweden lobotomized at least 4,500 people, mostly women, between 1944 and 1966. This figure includes young children. [142] And in Norway, there were 2,005 known lobotomies. [143] In Denmark, 4,500 lobotomies were known. [144] In Japan, most lobotomies have been performed on children with behavioral problems. The Soviet Union banned the practice in 1950 on moral grounds. [145] [146] [147] In Germany, it has only been played a few times. [148] By the late 1970s, the practice of lobotomy had generally ceased, although it continued in France until the 1980s.

[149] What effect did the ice pick lobotomy have on patients? This is exactly what takes place in the 1962 novel and the 1975 film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest,” in which Randle Patrick McMurphy, a violent but healthy man who declares himself insane to avoid prison, is sent to a mental hospital and receives a lobotomy that leaves him mute. insensitive and blank-eyed. Historically, patients with lobotomy immediately after surgery were often stunned, confused, and incontinent. Some have developed a huge appetite and gained considerable weight. Seizures were another common complication of surgery. The focus was on educating patients in the weeks and months following surgery. [15] Freeman`s most common reason for a patient`s lobotomy was to treat schizophrenia, especially in patients who had recently been diagnosed with the disease. He also used the procedure to treat chronic pain and suicidal depression. According to a 1937 New York Times article, people with the following symptoms would benefit from a lobotomy: “Tension, apprehension, anxiety, depression, insomnia, suicidal thoughts, delusions, hallucinations, crying fits, melancholy, obsessions, panic, disorientation, psychalgesia (pain of psychological origin), nervous indigestion and hysterical paralysis.” The law, on the other hand, deals deeply with mental states, especially intentions, and their relationship to behavior.