Prefrontal Lobotomies

It is amazing how far we have come in finding medical breakthroughs. I would hate to live in the years where the new medical breakthrough for treating mental disorders and sometimes chronic pain was performing prefrontal lobotomies. A prefrontal lobotomy is a surgery where the prefrontal cortex is disconnected from the rest of the brain. The surgery was done by drilling a hole on one’s head and damaging the prefrontal cortex by cutting its connections to the rest of the cortex. This was said to make patients tamer without impairing their sensations or coordination.

The first lobotomy performed in the United States was by Walter Freeman, an American Physician in 1936. A few other medical researchers had discovered and performed this process before Walter Freeman, but none to the extent that Walter Freeman soon began doing. After Walter Freeman performed his first lobotomy, he was very satisfied with the results that he soon began performing many more. Freeman suggested this procedure for many mental disorders such as psychosis and depression and even for criminality. Between 1939 and 1951, over 18,000 lobotomies were performed in the US. By the 1950s, people started protesting about these procedures due to the fact that “statistics showed roughly a third of lobotomy patients improved, a third stayed the same, and the last third actually got worse.”

 

An interesting case, was that of Rosemary Kennedy, sister of John F. Kennedy. Some of her family members considered her retarded because she was not as bright as other members. Although she was not as bright as others, Rosemary was a normal, fully functioning person. When Rosemary was 23, her father Joseph Kennedy, was told about prefrontal lobotomies. He was advised that it would calm Rosemary, so he gave permission for the lobotomy to be performed on his daughter. After the surgery, “Rosemary was reduced to an infantile mentality that left her incontinent and staring blankly at walls for hours. Her verbal skills were reduced to unintelligible babble.”

This shows that prefrontal lobotomies weren’t such a good idea. It is shocking to read that it had to take thousands and thousands of lobotomies to be performed so that people would start protesting and put an end to these procedures.