Further reading for Lobotomies
Lobotomies represent a real dark chapter in the history of medicine and treatment of the mentally ill. Also known as a leucotomy, the Lobotomy takes on many forms but is probably best known as the transorbital lobotomy, where a long sharp instrument, typically an ice pick, is inserted into the subject’s eye socket by tapping with a small hammer. The pick is then swept in an upward motion, severing numerous frontal lobe connections. The utter weirdness of this operation is not much unlike the work of Josef Mengele.
The lobotomy procedure was developed over time by many researchers and doctors but is best known by the work of neurologist, Walter Freeman, in the wake of World War 1 to treat significant disorders that were the result of being endlessly shelled by the Germans and then forced into smashmouth confrontations of hand-to-hand combat in the no-mans-land between trenches. It tends to fuck people up pretty significantly. Because mental illness was so poorly understood (and to some degree still is), the procedure was initially prescribed for patients suffering from extreme cases of schizophrenia, anxiety, and psychosis, and then gradually became more and more common for patients whose parents couldn’t handle their kids’ wild behavior or homosexuality.
Between the 1930’s and the 1960’s, when the procedure became recognized for the horrific thing that it is, 40,000 people were tragically lobotomized.
Episodes: 413 & 414
