The lunacy of lobotomy - Per Lanterna

The lunacy of lobotomy

A sadistic and idiotic fraud

If any activity in psychiatry conjures up pictures of lunatic psychiatrists running around performing sadistic human experimentation on terrified patients, it is lobotomy.

And yet that is exactly what occurred. Not as some ‘Frankenstein’ secretly testing his mad theories, but for more than two decades from the mid-1930s on, performed by the ‘very best’ psychiatrists, sanctioned by psychiatric organizations in the West and avidly promoted by the media as the latest fad. Truly a circus of horrors.

Was the practice banned in the West like it was, even in the Soviet Union? No, it petered out with the introduction of psychiatric drugs as treatments which, even then dangerous, were considered a better alternative than smashing one’s way into the patient’s skull and tearing apart brain tissue.

Leucotomy — a not noble Nobel Prize

There had been efforts of experimentation, attacking the brain in humans, however, this had not gained acceptance until leucotomy.

Leucotomy was initially performed by Egas Moniz who has the dubious distinction of being labelled the founder of ‘modern’ psychosurgery.

In turn, Moniz was inspired by experiments on chimpanzees by neuroscientist John Fulton. Fulton somehow claimed success for his experiments when the chimpanzees who were upset with his betrayal of agreements in experiments were “pacified” by the removal of the animal’s frontal lobes. 1

In 1935 Moniz first tried human experimentation consisting of injecting pure ethanol into the brain and then tried leucotomy, consisting of drilling a hole in a person’s head and taking cores from the prefrontal lobes of the brain. 2 As with Ugo Cerletti of ECT fame, Moniz provided glowing reports on the success of his treatment and ignored following up on his patients, who actually were found with debilitating personality changes, mentally and physically disabled. 3

In 1949 Moniz received the Nobel Prize for his viciousness which degraded the prize and yet stands as a warning to not take such honours at face value.

Walter Freeman’s barbaric fad

“He wanted to prove that he was right, he was convinced that he was right. I thought, ‘How can a man be relaxed just going blindly into a brain?!’” Wolfhard Baumgartel

After meeting with Moniz and correspondence, a United States psychiatrist named Walter Freeman renamed the procedure ‘lobotomy’ and performed it for the first time in 1936.

Freeman then changed Moniz’s procedure to instead of taking coring, slashing the interconnecting tissue from the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain. (Neither Moniz nor Freeman had any scientific basis for their procedures other than human experimentation and a personality failing of neither could admit they were wrong.) Nonetheless, the procedure required a neurosurgeon and Freman teamed up with James Watts to perform the act.

And a performance it was, playing to the media, Freeman the ‘showman,’ would invite the media and public to attend a lobotomy session. There is even a reference to Freeman killing a patient while posing for a media photograph thrusting the ‘ice pick;’ too far into the brain. 4 5

Bathing in his newfound fame, Freeman continued to play to the media making headlines with his antics — but far more seriously spreading the practice far more than it ever should have been. The ‘fad’ of lobotomy went worldwide without any serious monitoring of the effects on patients. One British surgeon was known to have performed 4,000 lobotomies without following up on the welfare of a single patient. 6

Was Freeman merely overwhelmed by his apparent ‘success’ or did he know exactly what he was doing? It would seem he knew very well the cognitive damage he was causing:

“When Freeman and Watts (1950) operated on their patients without general anesthesia, the patients sometimes cried out that they were dying from the surgery as they felt their vital mental functions being cut away.”

“Freeman (1959) suggests that it is good to damage the intellectual capacity of the neurotic because the neurotic thinks too much” … “Speaking at the Washington, D.C. academy of Neurosurgery in 1965, Freeman accurately describes the effects of his surgery when he points out that lobotomy leads to some of the same results as the last stages of deteriorating schizophrenia. When such a patient is so demoralized and deteriorated by institutional life that he no longer gives the ward any trouble, then there’s no purpose to giving him surgery.” 7

And what about the patient?

“When Freeman and Watts (1950) operated on their patients without general anesthesia, the patients sometimes cried out that they were dying from the surgery as they felt their vital mental functions being cut away. The surgeons would then tell them to pray or to sing patriotic songs or simply ignore them while going on with the cutting.” 8

Transorbital lobotomy or ‘ice pick lobotomy’

By January 1946, Walter Freeman decided to make the procedure even easier and introduced a ’10 minute lobotomy’.

The first lobotomy instruments used on patients were ice picks taken from Freeman’s kitchen which were used to make holes in the household’s belts.

“As those who watched the procedure described it, a patient would be rendered unconscious by electroshock. Freeman would then take a sharp ice pick-like instrument, insert it above the patient’s eyeball through the orbit of the eye, into the frontal lobes of the brain, moving the instrument back and forth. Then he would do the same thing on the other side of the face.” 9

Freeman now dropped any need for a neurosurgeon and operating room and according to him, the procedure could now be done in any room where ECT could be applied to provide seizures. 10

Wolfhard Baumgartel, a physician who witnesses Freedman perform a lobotomy told StoryCorps, “He wanted to prove that he was right, he was convinced that he was right. I thought, ‘How can a man be relaxed just going blindly into a brain?!’” 11 12

Even rejected by soviet psychiatry

While Soviet psychiatry had a very poor reputation for human rights in psychiatry, it banned the practice in 1950:

“Dr. Nicolai Oseresky a soviet psychiatrist said that lobotomies “violate the principles of humanity” and change “an insane person” into “an idiot”. 13

Aftermath

It is estimated that there were 80,000 persons subjected to lobotomy and possible far more, some 50,000 of those being in the United States primarily due to Freeman’s efforts.

Deaths directly from the procedure are reported as between 5% and 17%. 14 15 16

Many studies to follow up on the victims found evidence of debilitating brain damage and deteriorating states years after a lobotomy. They had lost their capacity of insight and judgement. Some cases developed epilepsy. Some were unable to care for their children, unable to hold down a job or unable to feed themselves and had to be re-taught the use of a toilet. 17 18 19

And of the artist or creative persons, Freeman himself tells us: “Theoretically, on the basis of psychologic and personality studies, creativeness should be abolished by lobotomy … On the whole, psychosurgery reduces creativity, sometimes to the vanishing point.” 20

Conclusion

Although ludicrous, you will still find some within psychiatry defending this idiocy.

There are no justifications for lobotomy other than psychiatrists of questionable intent holding self-importance and personal recompense more important than human decency and common sense.

Once again, bereft of any actual understanding of mankind, psychiatry was left to assault its patients with barbaric treatments.

1. Gismodo. The Invention Of Lobotomies Is As Disturbing As The Procedure. 2015.
2. Lillian B. Boettcher and Sarah T. Menacho. The early argument for prefrontal leucotomy: the collision of frontal lobe theory and psychosurgery at the 1935 International Neurological Congress in London. 2017.
3. Dominik Gross and Gereon Schäfer. Egas Moniz (1874–1955) and the “invention” of modern psychosurgery: a historical and ethical reanalysis under special consideration of Portuguese original sources. 2010.
4. Indians, Insanity, and American History Blog
5. The Psychologist. An obsession, a hobby or an expiation?
6. P Brennin . The Return of Lobotomy and Psychosurgery. 1972.
7. P Brennin . The Return of Lobotomy and Psychosurgery. 1972.
8. P Brennin . The Return of Lobotomy and Psychosurgery. 1972.
9. The Surprising History of the Lobotomy
10. Gary E Cordingley. Walter Freeman’s Lobotomies at Athens State Hospital. 2005.
11. Meg Matthias. Britannica. How Many People Actually Got Lobotomized?
12. Storycorps. My Lobotomy.
13. UKEssays. The History of the Lobotomy. 2021
14. P Brennin . The Return of Lobotomy and Psychosurgery. 1972.
15. Kenneth Ogren, Mikael Sandlund Lobotomy at a state mental hospital in Sweden. A survey of patients operated on during the period 1947–1958. 2007.
16. BBC Lobotomy: The brain op described as ‘easier than curing a toothache’ 2021.
17. P Brennin . The Return of Lobotomy and Psychosurgery. 1972.
18. Kenneth Ogren, Mikael Sandlund Lobotomy at a state mental hospital in Sweden. A survey of patients operated on during the period 1947–1958. 2007.
19. A. Miller. The Lobotomy Patient — A Decade Later. Can Med Assoc J. 1967
20. P Brennin . The Return of Lobotomy and Psychosurgery. 197