Summary
Summary:
The first form of lobotomy was first performed in the 1890s it began to be used to try and treat mental disorders and diseases. The main era that thousands of lobotomies were performed in was during the 1940s and 1950s. This procedure began with a German physiologist named Friedrich Goltz when he began to perform the procedure he tested on the frontal cortex of dogs. These findings inspired the physician, Gottlieb Burkhardt, who worked at a small asylum in Prefargier, Switzerland, to use ablations, and or break up the signals in the cortex to try and cure his mentally ill patients. In 1890, Burkhardt removed parts of the frontal cortex from 6 of his schizophrenic patients. One of these patients later committed suicide, and another died within one week of his surgery. While all these things happened Burkhardt believed that his method had been somewhat successful, in claiming this he faced strong opposition and stopped experimenting with brain surgery. The procedure of the lobotomy, on humans, wouldn’t come back into the light of day again until the 1930s, in the beginning, two neurologists at Yale tried to make this procedure safe for humans again. The two men that tried at the lobotomy again were Carlyle Jacobsen and John Fulton. On November 12th, 1953 these two neuroscientists performed the first prefrontal leucotomy in simpler terms it means, white matter cutting. The operation was carried out on a female manic-depressive patient the procedure lasted about 30 minutes total. The patient was first anesthetized, her skull had holes that were then drilled on both sides through the bone. Then, absolute alcohol was injected through the holes in the skull, into the white matter beneath the prefrontal area. In doing this two major bundles of nerves were split which connected the frontal cortex which is the main center for your brain and the thalamus which is an area that relays sensory information to other areas of the brain.
Dr. Walter Freeman, an American clinical neurologist, had been following the work of Moniz closely and had also attended the symposium on the frontal lobe. It was Freeman who introduced the lobotomy to the United States, and who would later become the biggest advocate of the technique. With neurosurgeon James Watts, Freeman refined the technique developed by Moniz. They changed the name of the technique to "lobotomy", to emphasize that it was a white and grey matter that was being destroyed. The first Freeman-Watts Standard Lobotomy was used in September 1936 on 63-year-old Alice Hood Hammatt. The procedure began by the surgeons making incisions 3 centimeters long, that they then would insert a drill into, they made holes in her skull over the left and right frontal lobes. They then inserted a narrow strip of metal into the holes they went 4 centimeters straight down through the hole on the left side into the exposed surface of the brain. The instrument that was inserted in each hole was moved up and down to sever the thalamocortical fibers which again help to relay messages around your brain for sensory and motor functions. The entire operation lasted around an hour. Some months after her surgery, Hammatt suffered some seizure-like symptoms, most likely due to the surgery. However, she continued to live with reduced anxiety and stayed out of mental hospitals. Sadly Alice Hammatt contracted pneumonia at the age of 68 and died.
While his first procedure was successful, Dr. Freeman was unhappy with the new procedure he saw it as both time-consuming and messy. So he began to try and decide to make a new, faster one, then the transorbital, "ice-pick" lobotomy was born. His new technique of trans-orbital lobotomy could be taught in a day or two to state-hospital psychiatrists who, like himself, had no certification in surgery. Freeman gave lobotomies to children, adults, and elderly people with illnesses such as depression, manic-depression, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (ocd), and a variety of undiagnosed psychiatric illnesses. He believed in the lobotomy, defended it, promoted it, and demonstrated it during psychosurgical road trips he took to more than 55 hospitals in 23 states. He felt that lobotomy could return psychologically disabled people, that had no other options for life back into well blended and well mannered humans.
Dr. Freeman performed the “ice pick” lobotomy for the first time on January 17th, 1945. With the patient rendered unconscious by electroshock, an instrument was inserted above the eyeball through the socket using a hammer. Once inside the brain, the instrument was moved back and forth; this was then repeated on the other side. Freeman's new technique could be performed in about 10 minutes. Because it did not require anesthesia, it could be performed outside of the clinical setting, and lobotomized patients did not need hospital internment afterward.
In 1960 Howard Dully at the time an 11 year old child, was given a lobotomy, He claims that one that day he was sent to a private hospital, was taken back to a room was subdued with a quick electroshock treatment so that the procedure could begin. At this time in his life Dully claims that he wasn't any different from any other children his age while the one person that believed he needed this operation was his recently founded step-mother that did not really care for him. Dully remembers waking up from the procedure with his eyes swollen and a headache, knowing nothing about what he had just been through, Dully was the youngest person at the time to have a trans-orbital lobotomy, surprisingly to all he survived.
In 1967, Freeman received a visit from Helen Mortensen who was one of his first trans-orbital patients in 1946. She suffered a relapse of her psychiatric symptoms in 1956 and Freeman gave her a second operation. After several more years of working productively, Mortensen wanted a third lobotomy. Freeman did the surgery and severed a blood vessel in Mortensen’s brain. Three days later, Mortensen died. The hospital then revoked Freeman’s surgical privileges and he retired soon after since his reputation had been comprised.
All in all Freeman’s effects on modern medicine could be that doctors now choose to try and do as little physical manipulation as possible they see the lobotomy as somewhat of a torture device that probably hurt more individuals than it helped and that we may never know to the true extent of what happened due to unreliable records that were kept. While in the psychological field one could see that it made psychologists try to use less talking and try to see the person as a whole and try to treat the brain as a whole identity that can affect a person’s life and abilities. While they still see talking is a lot better than trying to fry someone’s brain and stick a ice pick in their eyes.