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In 1966 1960, Howard Dully became one of the youngest recipients of an “icepick” lobotomy at the age of 12. The psychiatrist who administered the procedure, Dr. Walter Freeman, believed that mental illness was tied to overactive emotions, and that this procedure of cutting the brain dulled the errant feelings, and “cured” the patient.
Howard Dully was brought in for the procedure because his stepmother described him as “unbelievably defiant,” saying among other things: “He objects to going to bed but then sleeps well. He does a good deal of daydreaming and when asked about it he says ‘I don’t know.’ He turns the room’s lights on when there is broad sunlight outside.” After Howard’s stepmother visited with Dr. Freeman, he suggested that “the family should consider the possibility of changing Howard’s personality by means of transorbital lobotomy.”
Dr. Freeman’s transorbital lobotomy procedure was literally an ice pick hammered through the back of each eye socket into the brain then wiggled in a stirring motion, often taking just a few minutes under local anesthesia. Later a specific surgical implement called a leucotome was developed for lobotomies, but after it broke off inside of the skulls of some patients, it was replaced with a stronger tool called the orbitoclast. This surgery severed the prefrontal cortex from the rest of the brain, sometimes removing the undesirable behavior, but often resulting in unwanted effects on a person’s personality and social functioning.
Dr. Freeman brought the lobotomy procedure to the US in 1936, at which time it was administered by drilling a hole through the skull. He “improved” upon it in 1946 with his icepick method. His first patient that year was a housewife, who was reportedly immediately cured of her violent suicidal tendencies. It made the front page of the New York Times the following day, calling it “Surgery of the Soul.”
Dr. Walter Freeman felt that his 10-minute lobotomy was revolutionary medicine, and he prescribed it for personality problems, depression, headaches, and in Howard Dully’s case, misbehavior in children. Newspapers described it as “easier than curing a toothache.” There were some apparent successes over the years as well as some tragic failures, such as a woman who had a lobotomy to cure her headaches in 1950. Her headaches disappeared, but she was left with the mind of a child.
Dr. Walter Freeman’s lobotomies continued until February of 1967, when a housewife named Helen Mortenson died of a brain hemorrhage during the procedure, and his license to practice medicine was revoked. He had lobotomized over 2500 patients in 23 states during the 31 year period. Until his death in 1972, he continued to stay in touch with his patients, driving his so-called “lobotomobile” around the country.
Howard Dully, the boy who underwent the procedure at age twelve, is now a fifty-six year old bus driver in California who has spent his life feeling “like a freak, ashamed.” He is tortured with thoughts of how the operation altered his mind and his soul. His story, called “My Lobotomy,” describes his exploration into the history of Dr. Freeman’s operations, and more specifically, his own. It’s an amazing listen.
Link to NPR story found on BoingBoing
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Hooray for medicine!
This is way way way more disturbing than BodyWorlds. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.
I cought the tail end of Howard’s story on All Things Considered the other day. It was horrifying. To imagine that this sort of medical barbarism was practiced within my lifetime just, and pardon the metaphor, blows my mind. Thanks for posting it. This is one of those terrible footnotes in history that must never be forgotten.
I heard this yesterday afternoon on NPR. It was riveting. I sat in my car for 15 minutes after I got to my destination and couldn’t turn it off. This is the most persuasive evidence I’ve seen yet that people can’t see doctors as “god,” and just blindly follow their advice. This is very scary stuff!
I have heard of this surgery before, studying psychology and am just as revolted today as the first time I had heard about this. I am glad that things like this are still brought to our attention because unless we are reminded of the barbarism of the past then we are doomed to repeat it.
I had this operation done a few months ago, and have never felt better. Sure I uninate in public waste baskets and drool constantly, but it’s so much better then being a normal functoning member of society. I plan on signing up for public assistance next month. I’m sure I’ll be able to get a handicap parking sticker for this as well. I guess Howard lives up to the “Dull-y” name. He sure dulled the lives he worked on. Was this guy in the movie “Saw”?
Howard Dully was the patient. Walter Freeman was the doctor.
This is tragic! My Mom’s stepsister had this done to her. Inhumane really.
1942: Rosemary Kennedy. May Joseph Kennedy be burning in Hell for what he did to his daughter, and the rest of the family do the same for covering it up. JFK & RFK got theirs; EMK deserves it for killing MJK too.
I still can’t decide if it would be better to have a frontal labotomy or a bottle in front of me.
The writer Joyce Carol Oates wrote a novel, “ZOMBIE,” about this type of lobotomy.
It’s a serial killer who is doing the “surgeries”, and really quite gruesome, but an excellent read… after all, it’s Oates! She can be a master of the macabre.
Mental Plastic Surgery
Lobotomy the gift to make society accept you.
Plastic surgery the gift to make society accept you.
Maybe in the future, people will be disgusted by breast augmentation or liposuction?
If patient/parent believe a “procedure” will help them where nothing else has,
they will jump at it no matter how messed up patient becomes.
Hey, Ho, Let’s Go…. Hey, Ho, Lets Go……
Thanks for listening although some of the commects confuse me (I presume they are meant to be funny?
Howard Dully said: “Thanks for listening although some of the commects confuse me (I presume they are meant to be funny?”
Yes, my comment was. It’s was a bit obscure, if you were a fan of the Ramones (Not that I am) you would know that they had a song named “Hey Ho Let’s Go”. Being a fan (Not that I am) you would also know that the Ramones had done a song named “Teenage Lobotomy”. The only reason I am carrying around this useless knowledge in my head is do to a crappy 80’s movie call “Rock-n-Roll High School”. I therefore hold Damn Interesting totally responsible for bringing back those memories.
That was just cruel. I’m surprised the kid could still speak after that. No wonder he was reduced to a bus driver. Could’ve lived to have a good life, but nooo, his stupid parents had to try and make him like everyone else. Ugh.
Dementia said: “That was just cruel. I’m surprised the kid could still speak after that. No wonder he was reduced to a bus driver. Could’ve lived to have a good life, but nooo, his stupid parents had to try and make him like everyone else. Ugh.”
Yes, all bus drivers should be imprisoned. Damn them! Oh, hey, wait a minute, bus drivers are productive, useful members of society.
When ignorance is carried this far, it can only result in foolish harm. Didn’t anybody say: wait a sec, inserting sharp objects into my brain, the organ that lets us comprehend the world around us, through my eyes doesn’t sound very safe, professional, or sane?
How could that possibly have been thought to work?! Just stirring around brains? I mean, even on the most basic level of stupid reasoning, all the brains are still there…how would anything change? The Dully case seems to give new meaning to the evil stepmother thing…. Heavn forbid he shouldn’t listen to her. Why not completely change his personality. Better yet, put him up for adoption and start over with a new kid. Cheaper, and more helpful.
A lobotomy on a 12-year-old for acting like a 12-year-old is akin to cutting off a hand after a papercut.
I guess they thought it was stimulating the brain.
Remember that today they electricuit people to jump start there brain, untel the day of nanites we will still be tormented by questionable medical ethics. Im sure this labotomy seemed reasonable at the time given the limited understanding of the criticalness of the mind and also the better understanding of other mental illnesses today (which are sometimes solved with drugs or theorpy etc)
MeasureMan said: “Yes, my comment was. It’s was a bit obscure, if you were a fan of the Ramones (Not that I am) you would know that they had a song named “Hey Ho Let’s Go”. Being a fan (Not that I am) you would also know that the Ramones had done a song named “Teenage Lobotomy”. The only reason I am carrying around this useless knowledge in my head is do to a crappy 80’s movie call “Rock-n-Roll High School”. I therefore hold Damn Interesting totally responsible for bringing back those memories.”
Ummm as far as I was aware the song was called ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’?
It truly is sickening that some people are able to get away with such hienous acts. Changing a persons personallity in that way is as far as im concerned the same as killing that person. Sure they’re still there in the flesh but they arn’t the same person.
See, this is probably why the stereotype of the wicked stepmother endures to this very day. If they’re not trying to poison you with apples they’re taking you to dangerous men who want to put their ice picks in your brain.
sulkykid said: “Yes, all bus drivers should be imprisoned. Damn them! Oh, hey, wait a minute, bus drivers are productive, useful members of society.”
since when?
“Dr. Freeman’s transorbital lobotomy procedure was literally an ice pick hammered through the back of each eye socket into the brain then wiggled in a stirring motion”
Now theres a good scientific word, wiggled.
We are still pumping kids full of drugs to control their behaviour.
Byrden is right. Every few years we find out something we use often in medicine is a carcinogen.
I myself have found no relief from Zoloft, Remeron or any other medicine for mental illness. The fact that the depression lifts (slightly) but you’re left with a dozen side effects doesn’t sound safe. Just because these drugs don’t physically damage the brain (or do they?), doesn’t mean they won’t cause permanent problems.
In all honesty, I think we should all stick to true and tried medicine and food. I myself will leave new products for people to beta test for a few decades before I use them myself. As for my depression, nothing has worked better than marijuana, and being that it has been in use for thousands of years and has no reported case of death (not even 1..), and study after study (as well as anecdotal evidence) show it does no damage on the brain even after heavy long-term use, it seems safe enough to me.
Here’s an interesting tidbit. I was born in a village here in Pakistan. Back in the day, nobody got sick, mental illness was unheard of and everyone was generally fit. Problems started arising (physical + mental) when commercialism came to the village. Things like synthetic medicine, mass production of food, insecticide, cigarettes and so on. Before this, the only available psychoactive drug was weed, the only available medicine was natural (herbs), and we mainly hunted for food. My mother – who still adopts the old ways of the village – is 94 years old and she has most of her teeth (and they are white), she can walk and so forth.
As for me, I was mentally fine until I settled in Europe 20-30 years ago. I noticed my health decline rather quickly because as a college student I had to settle for processed food, and soapbar hash.
Anyway, my point is that while picking at the brain with a sharp object thru the eye socket is obviously dangerous, we’re all ingesting potential toxins and carcinogens daily.
Lobotomy to “cure” teenage crankiness?!?
It’s an interesting parallel to the practice of prescribing Ritalin to the more active children at school – it “cures” this thing called Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Barbaric! But…after all, he was “unbelievably defiant,” and his mother said “he objects to going to bed but then sleeps well. He does a good deal of daydreaming and when asked about it he says ‘I don’t know.’ He turns the room’s lights on when there is broad sunlight outside.” Pure evil, that kid.
Better still: my 17 year old son has difficulty paying attention, occasionally gets caught smoking (gasp!) pot, and has poor grades. I can dope him up with Ritalin and hope he’s part of the happy 1/3…or I can “wiggle” an ice pick in his skull.
And now, my hands are stiff and sore – could be Arthritis. Maybe I’ll get some Vioxx! And die!!!
I have a funny feeling diacetylmorphine is on to something: “As for me, I was mentally fine until I settled in Europe 20-30 years ago. I noticed my health decline rather quickly because as a college student I had to settle for processed food, and soapbar hash.” Diet? You mean diet can help with some common health problems?
HELL yes.
Was medical science that inane in 1966? Did we really have to suffer the stupidity of experimental medicine like lobotomies to get where we are today…and is it really any better now?
Years ago I went through a two year rash of health problems, and all the hours I spent in the midst of members of The Learned Medical Elite, I wasn’t particularly impressed. I was relegated to “one of those” doctors who, rather than perform a simple excision of a cyst from my tailbone with a scalpel and other sharp, well-known implements, decided he needed to log time on a surgical laser to gain experience hours for his growing cosmetic surgery business. Instead of a little 1″ incision that could have healed in a few weeks, I got a 7″ slash that took six months to close and resulted in a small stroke. I’m told I should have sued him, but I never got around to it – I never liked that idea.
My health is far better these days, but for the last twenty years I have not seen a single doctor who has not prescribed at least one medication for whatever ailments they discovered – prescriptions I inevitably tore up and refused to take. My favorite experience is the little a$$hole doctor who measured my cholesterol and come up with some godawful high figure in the 280’s. He tossed me a sample of Lipitor and a prescription. I never took the stuff, and given I had been sick as hell and was experiencing lowered liver function I’m glad – I read that Lipitor is bad news for people with liver problems, and Doctor God never looked, checked, or asked. I saw another doctor a while later for continued cholesterol monitoring and he scored me at 225. I stopped eating red meat entirely…and lately I’ve been hovering around 180. Thanks, Doctor God, for trying to kill me.
Funny thing, too: My family makes cysts – we just…make them. Usually on our necks and wrists, and my sister and I both had big, nasty Pilonidal cysts (big, infected cysts on the coccyx – that’s the laser experience I wrote about above). I stopped eating red meat. I haven’t had a cyst since. Could be I outgrew them. Could be I eat a semi-vegetarian diet. Could be sunspots. Coincidence?
Wow! I went on a rant! I have to stop. Sorry, everyone. I sometimes think that since I experienced a flurry of stupid, poorly trained, or otherwise self-impressed but not-very-talented doctors, that ALL doctors are horrible vicious idiots. We all know that’s not true. But I will never, ever trust doctors, or the industry medicine has become.
Whew! Catharsis!!! Now: where’s my ice pick?
By the way – Alan: damn interesting, chum. I was re-reading the story and realized you could have written 200 more pages and it still would not have been enough. And hey – no apology needed for the rerun!
Also: how’s the server move coming aling? Tell you what – those HP DL585’s can be kinda cranky – don’t forget your ice pick!!!
…sounds like pick, poke and hope surgery to me!
…and I believe the technical term for “wiggling” would be…”pithing”. Then again, a little more pithing in Washington could go a long way…couldn’t be any worse!
And Alan, I too agree with schuylercat…apologies not necessary…just keep the damn interesting articles coming!!!
Other damn interesting brain damage is hemifield neglect and motion blindness.
http://www.psych.ucalgary.ca/PACE/VA-Lab/Visual%20Agnosias/hemi-neglect.htm
http://www.hhmi.org/senses/b210.html
They used to use frontal lobotomies for epilepsy patients, too. Your frontal lobe is where your personality is contained, so when you mush it up, your personality either changes or disappears altogether. Crazy and scary!
Now why couldn’t they have just gotten him an acupuncture treament or one of those herbal concoctions? The worst that can happen is a little itchyness or maybe an upset stomach… a sharp contrast against a divirginized eye socket.
Maybe they thought it was more direct. Nothing like gettin’ in there and pushing some buttons yourself, eh? Geez.
I have no personal knowledge of this subject but my aunt, who was a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, told me that it was a shame that the procedure was banned just as they were finally figuring out the subtleties of it. This doctor sounds like a quack but some legitimate research was done on this subject and less drastic options were developed. She said that some completely non-functional people became coherent and at-least-partly functional after “limited lobotomies” and that she felt that the people who were actually helped by them were lost in the horror of the vitims of the earlier experiments.
schuylercat said: “Barbaric! But…after all, he was…
Jeeze Schuylercat! This is the comments section, not “WriteYourOwnNovel.com”!
Yikes. Hearing about this “surgery” never fails to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I’ve read other articles about it which said that sometimes the patients were given no anesthestic. They were wide awake, sat in a chair, and sometimes had to stand in line to wait their turn. It’s hard to imagine now, but back then, questioning a doctor was unheard of. I’m betting that many of those well-meaning relatives (including the Kennedys) regretted the decision horribly for the rest of their lives. Medicine is not quite so barbaric today, and many treatments help people immeasurably. But not always. We should always question and do our own research, because we’re the ones that have to live with the results. Previous commentors are probably right, we do bring a lot of our problems on ourselves, and medicine could learn plenty from proven methods like acupuncture.
And yes, bus drivers are productive, NECESSARY members of society. Don’t we trust them with our lives?
This brings up a very important item in dealing with doctors: they are giving you medical _advice_. It is a bad practice to take things that anyone says and accept it as infallible and the absolute truth. You must take what someone (especially a doctor) offers you and question it first – give it a sanity check at the very least (10 postage stamps? That’ll be $5.00 [would you let that slide?]) This isn’t a condemnation of doctors in general (I’ll list a few specifics further down) but an emphasis on how serious the effects can be. If you don’t question the price of postage stamps, you’ll only be out a few bucks – if you don’t question what a doctor does with you, it could cost you a limb, your health, or even your life if he made a mistake (and everyone does… education makes a doctor much better than a layman for making medical decisions, but like everyone else on the face of the Earth, mistakes _will_ be made on occasion).
When I was first diagnosed with epilepsy, I asked the doctor if I needed to change my drinking habits, since I was going to be on medication for the rest of my life. *He said “no”.* A week later I sat down at a friend’s house and had a beer. I almost got halfway through it before I found myself on the floor and unable to get up for half an hour. When I questioned the doctor about it later, his reply was: “I thought it would be better for you to find out the hard way right off the bat than to have something more serious happen further down the line.” Since I was a young twenty-something, he thought it was inevitable that I would drink against his advice if he told me to avoid alcohol. Why did I bother asking? I was wrong to think that I should trust the doctor’s advice in that circumstance and not wait until I had a full prescription (not just the sample bottles I got from the doctor to get me started) so I could read the manufacturer’s advisories and warnings. I switched to a different doctor immediately.
My second doctor had me on increasing doses of anti-convulsants over the next decade and rebuffed my questions about the surgical options I had seen on television science shows. His reply was that surgery could only be considered as a last resort, after I had been through no less than half a dozen medications at maximum dosage to prove that medication could not control the condition. (Medical Doctors are trained to cure diseases using MEDICATION – hence the word Medical in their title. Also that is half the reason most of them have a distrust and hatred for chiropractors and acupuncturists – they don’t prescribe medication. While some chiropractors are disreputable or are fronts for brothels, many are excellent at their craft and have afforded me quick relief from pains that I have had.) After I suffered another seizure and he asked me to take a larger dose of my medication, one that was larger than what he had previously told me was the maximum dosage for someone of my size, I switched doctors again.
The third doctor listened to my questions about a surgical option, and right away referred me to USC University hospital for a study to determine of surgery was a viable option. NO HESITATION. What the doctors at USC learned during the surgery (the tests showed it was a very viable option) was that the medication had never controlled the condition, only masked the symptoms. 15% of my right frontal lobe had been killed by the seizures – as evidenced by the tissue that had crystallized (that’s what the body does to dead brain tissue, I’m told). Luckily the doctor performing the surgery was one of 12 surgeons in the world who have operated that deep in the brain and had their patients live. If I had not questioned that second doctor and sought out better care, I would be dead today.
The lesson with me isn’t that doctors are bad – one saved my life for sure. The lesson is that as a patient, you need to involve yourself in the process, understand what is being recommended, and weigh how it can affect you. The decision of what gets done to you is yours – acting on the _advice_ of a physician.
For Howard Dully’s family the lesson should be: is getting a child to go to bed and behave a little better worth the risks of brain damage from a treatment that was being sold as a cure-all for dozens of ailments? Their only sin was trusting a doctor (who was marketing his product to the broadest possible consumer base) who said he could help, and not fully questioning his methods. Back then, not many people did.
Howard seems to have more respect, more decency and more introspect than many who have not had to experienced this horrific procedure. Even through all the suffering and self-doubt, he shows compassion and dignity. If you are still with us, hold your head very high my friend, because you have faced what many consider the most fearful and possibly most crushing thing there may be and have greatly over come that…. on so many levels.
A couple commenters already mentioned it, but since I am in the position of watching my ex drug both of our kids into insensibility with Ritalin I have to reiterate… nothing has changed except for the nature of the “icepick” we’re sticking into their brains. Slim metal or fat chemicals, what’s the difference?
HH
bsmitty said: “Yikes. Hearing about this “surgery” never fails to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I’ve read other articles about it which said that sometimes the patients were given no anesthestic. They were wide awake, sat in a chair, and sometimes had to stand in line to wait their turn. It’s hard to imagine now, but back then, questioning a doctor was unheard of. I’m betting that many of those well-meaning relatives (including the Kennedys) regretted the decision horribly for the rest of their lives. Medicine is not quite so barbaric today, and many treatments help people immeasurably. But not always. We should always question and do our own research, because we’re the ones that have to live with the results…”
Ok, how many shared bsmitty’s feeling of revulsion over this story? And how many of those support “abortion rights”?
And why is it that a people who is so readily able to see the barbarism in giving a 12 year old kid a lobotomy fails to see a problem with killing a child in its mother’s womb? Even knowing the details of how the abortion procedure is carried out (I’ll spare you all the gory specifics) doesn’t seem to faze most people.
Damn strange.
Not strange at all just_dave. If the alternative to giving the 12-year old a lobotomy was not everybody goes home, and the parents try another way to get good behavior, but tossing Mrs. Dully up on the operating table for major surgery, the equation would look a bit different. A mother might well choose to undergo such a thing for the welfare of her child, but the equation would decidedly differ. Make the alternative strapping the mother down against her will and operating on her, and the equation changes again. That last equation seems to be what many advocates of abortion bans are advocating.
That said, I don’t think this is a particularly good choice of place for an abortion debate. It’s not like there’s a lack of other forums for debate.
I agree with Byrden, Diacetylmorphine, Schuylercat and Cynthia Woods on their opinions; which is exactly why I’m looking into alternative medicine. =)
Oh and Dave, lets keep out of a political discussion for now, I’m sure you can find a right-wing forum to evangelize.
Oh and Dave, lets keep out of a political discussion for now, I’m sure you can find a right-wing forum to evangelize.”
I see this as more of a moral question, as is the practice of lobotomizing someone against their will. In both the case of H. Dully and the average abortion in the US, the mother is making decisions regarding the life and well being of her child that she should not make. At least with the lobotomy, nobody dies.
Dave, please leave the references to those kinds of issues out of here, this just isn’t the place to discuss them.
disbelieving said: “…Here’s an interesting tidbit. I was born in a village here in Pakistan. Back in the day, nobody got sick, mental illness was unheard of and everyone was generally fit. Problems started arising (physical + mental) when commercialism came to the village.”
I agree that many commercialized chemicals and medicines have dangerous side effects that may not appear until years later; no argument from me there. However, “back in the day, nobody got sick”? You’re kidding right? Nobody got polio, influenza, scurvy, smallpox? How do you explain the doubling of life-expectancy rates in the 20th Century? I don’t think weed did it.
Did you know the ancient Romans would gargle urine to whiten their teeth? It worked because of the ammonia in it. I’m not implying anything about your mother, but sometimes the old way isn’t necessarily the best way.
irea6242: and you are? Oh, that’s right, just another DI reader. :-/
just_dave: I concur 100%.
Now, as someone who suffers from a disorder of the type that would have “required” a lobotomy fifty years ago, I can say that this is disgusting. Currently, some feel that shock treatment, electroshock therapy, would benefit someone with my disorder (schizo-affective disorder). I say to them that these barbaric practices need to stop. Most of the time these treatments are done against the patient’s will.
While I agree that those with mild depression can learn to control their symptoms without medication if the negative side-effects outweigh the benefits, I also feel that with most major illnesses, medication IS necessary to give patients any quality of life at all.
As for the article, it was disturbing but interesting. I would love an article about electro-shock therapy, if there isn’t one already. (I haven’t yet made my way through the archives.)
twyls
lobotomies can often kill people, if not straight away later down the track.
But as always people are trying to control other people etc,.. It is no different today and is well practived by CIA/Terrorist secs and many other secretive agencies globally with the use of drugs or direct brain stimulation. And with the upcoming nano technologies you will see fully programmable people becoming a very EASY reality. One day you could wake up as a super assasin agent for the CIA or as a slave worker in a factory.
All this creates civil unrest I think, I think such technics can help in educational manners and medical proceedures but the military gets all things first and will abuse it to the full extent, then it gets passed to the private sector.. Just not the way it should be but is.
Hey now this dr. Freeman sounds like a swell guy
“What is food to one is to others a bitter poison” – Roman philosopher Lucretius
“Nobody knows shit about health” – Lewis Black
PRIME, I have a degree in nanotechnology and it is my _opinion_ that manipulation via that route is a lot farther away than you think. I do agree with you as far as people waking up as slave workers but in my experience it has been the product of economy and drug addiction that does that.
I’m from a small two-class rural town with a meth problem where the lower class escapes from the reality of overtime and 12 hour swing shifts by using tons of meth and become slaves for drug money. This supports disbelievings statements about capitalism in a roundabout way. Physical and mental problems coming from a drug problem that comes from capitalism.
Howard, thank you for sharing your story. Your voice is compelling and heartbreaking. I wish you nothing but the best, may you have peace and happiness in your life.
It’s funny, topics like this always take me back to an art history assignment I did back in the day.
I was studying Hieronymus Bosch, more particularly his painting entitled “The Cure of Folly” which depicts a surgeon out in the street, extracting a tulip from a man’s skull (the tulip was symbolic of madness). Apparently, in the medieval times, it was common practice to extract a stone from a crazy person’s skull to cure madness’ of any sort. People literally lined up in the streets to have it performed on themselves or their mad relatives.
Obviously you’d be struggling to find a stone in every person’s skull (let alone anyone’s) and so the surgeon would’ve probably rooted around for something… thus probably lobotomizing half of medieval Holland.
I have many Dutch ancestors, and this would explain a lot!
I don’t see any problems with the idea. It was clearly done unproffessionally but I think it should be looked into and be made a whole lot safer. Some people have serious problems, and this might simply be a good solution for some.
For example there are lots of people who get shock therapy regulary and it helps them alot. Infact some people have a lot of trouble living without it.
One of the main driving factors for this social bias against shock therapy and lobotamy is due to the book “One flew over the Coocoo’s Next” Which I have heard has put back American psychiatric care for around 10 years. It was good story but not based on any scientfic information and gave the impression to many that mental institutions are evil places where patients are tortured and abused
It is really scary to go through surgeries and other non-reversible procedures just because a single doctors opinion. When I was a kid my mother had done through appendix surgery because she was having pains in the that part. Doctor said it should be done immediately. When the organ was taken out, it was obvious that there were no problems with it(we kept it in a little vial for a long time. I know now that that was sick:) ) The later closest diagnosis was a genetical illness.
Bambi: sounds like you need to go to a mental institute yourself A.S.A.P. Anyone in this day and age still suggesting the use of a lobotomy is clearly braindamaged him/herself… :-/
The “pioneers” of this “treatment” have a lot to answer for. They skewed their results, exaggerating the benefits, and never mentioned the failures they had, the damage they caused, which was immense in the extreme. They were just trying to get famous.
I have strong belief that most doctors knew that lobotomy was not a real cure. I agree with Howard Dully, in that lobotomy wasn’t meant to “cure” people, only to “quiet people down”, to reduce them to a passive, even vegetative state, so that they couldn’t put up resistance. In other words, they lobotomized people they didn’t like, people who didn’t “fit in”, people who were “too much trouble”. Lobotomy as a means of social control.
I hope lobotomy never makes a come back, in any form.
Hey, it works for me…and me and me and me and…
“In other words, they lobotomized people they didn’t like, people who didn’t “fit in”, people who were “too much trouble”. Lobotomy as a means of social control.
I hope lobotomy never makes a come back, in any form.”
I believe it has: psychoactive drugs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_drug) prescribed by physicians and mental health practitioners. (I realize that not every case of such is an example, though.)
As others have pointed out, it is interesting to note that things like this are very common today in alternate forms. ADD, ADHD and Depression are some of the most commonly diagnosed illnesses, but at what point do you even consider a certain trait an “illness?” I’d like to create a cure for stupid, but unfortunately society does not yet consider this a problem (I wonder why…). There are also other such barbaric medical procedures in practice, such as plastic surgery and abortion.
Years from now, there is no doubt in my mind that we will look back in similar disgust.
just_dave said: “I see this as more of a moral question, as is the practice of lobotomizing someone against their will. In both the case of H. Dully and the average abortion in the US, the mother is making decisions regarding the life and well being of her child that she should not make. At least with the lobotomy, nobody dies.”
Do you have a better person in mind to make decisions regarding the life and well being of a child, other than his mother?
Hey isnt it interesting how a piece of meat and some water can make one think and feel? Wow. My brain’s Damn Interesting! Oh, and did the eye get damaged during the lobotomy? ew
PS: why waste time opening up skulls? GO INVENT LESS PAINFUL VACCINES!!!
According to Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, the great Newton did something similar to himself! He used a thin knife to explore the area in back of his eyeball, apparently without damage!!! I also found out that Newton was very into alchemy and all sorts of pseudo-scientific things. An analysis of his hair puts his level of mercury at 20 times the “safe” level, which could account for some of his peculiar behaviors! It would be interesting to know if that could have contributed to his genius.
Cynthia Wood said: “Not strange at all just_dave. If the alternative to giving the 12-year old a lobotomy was not everybody goes home, and the parents try another way to get good behavior, but tossing Mrs. Dully up on the operating table for major surgery, the equation would look a bit different. A mother might well choose to undergo such a thing for the welfare of her child, but the equation would decidedly differ. Make the alternative strapping the mother down against her will and operating on her, and the equation changes again. That last equation seems to be what many advocates of abortion bans are advocating.
That said, I don’t think this is a particularly good choice of place for an abortion debate. It’s not like there’s a lack of other forums for debate.”
No, what you have said, Cynthia, is not the “same”. Childbirth is not a surgical proceedure, nor is killing an already developing child. His point was that both are considered “surgury” and both are not … not on the mother or the 12 year old getting his brain pulled out and not on a new life snuffed out like a cigarette ash inconveniently smoldering on your fur coat. I’ll take any forum where the issue is presented. This is about the sanctity of humanity vs. the blindness of what is considered medicine.
I had heard of lobotomies before, but I had never read an article on the “science” of the procedure. However, I did know that a lot of people were messed up by it, b/c we watched a video on Alcatraz in our U.S. History class, and they filmed an “interview” w/a man who had a lobotomy-all he could do was stare and drool like an infant. Giving the poor kid a lobotomy b/c he’s “unbelievably defiant”? How is not going to bed on time and using unnecessary electricity being unbelievebly defiant? He was just being a kid-testing his limits. And I do agree-psychoactive drugs pretty much are the new lobotomy. When I was on Zoloft for my depression, I found that it did nothing but help me gain weight and make sure I was unresponsive emotionally. I would never use psychoactive drugs-like Ritalin-on my kids. And who decided what is “unbelievably defiant” anyway? Geesh.
Psychoactive drugs are TEMPORARY, lobotomization is permanent. Psychoactive drugs can always be discontinued if the patient does not improve. And, realistically, you can not force a drug on a person, short of institutionalizing them. If he or she doesn’t want to take it, they just won’t.
Scientology (and Scientologists) need to go @#$% themselves. They can base their lives on the morally bankrupt writings of a crappy science fiction author, but they should STFU about it in the real world or face the ridicule and ostracization that they deserve.
*Morally bankrupt because he founded a religion for profit (and said he was going to do exactly that ahead of time!) So, yeah, scum of the earth.
Where’s a scientologist? Let me at em’! Tom, that you? No, no don’t eat that. Aww maannnn… why’d you have to eat that?
I have to go to the bathroom.
tigoldbitty said: “I have to go to the bathroom.”
that’s actually really weird. so do i.
Well, I was just wondering, have been wondering more like, about Lobotomies. WHERE DOES THE EXCESS BRAIN TISSUE GO?? After they mutilated it and turned it to juice, does it just sit in the cavity or what???
Prince said: “”Dr. Freeman’s transorbital lobotomy procedure was literally an ice pick hammered through the back of each eye socket into the brain then wiggled in a stirring motion”
Now theres a good scientific word, wiggled.”
Because it’s such a scientific procedure…
Anyhow, this disturbed me more then this article I read last night about the candiru (which everyone should read if you want to have nightmares). Disturbing, but Damn Interesting.
You all seem shocked and awed by this horrific act while hospitals in America still routinely mutilate childrens’ penises.
Myabe Mr Freeman was mutilated as a baby and was taking this out on people.
Circumcision is just as bad. And circumcision is the cause of most mental ilness today.
Nuh uh. I was circumcised, and I’m mentally ill because my mother is.
R.J. reply:
Really, now, what planet are you from? The movie “One Flew Over the Coocoo’s Nest” was a classic that ‘educated’ the masses. Assylums, as they were called, were barbaric and inhumane. People were tossed into them for many reasons — often having little to do with insanity. Helpless people were treated like rabid animals, abused and tormented by their keepers. Many experaments (medicines and surgical procedures) took place in these ‘institutions’ on innocent people. You are either very nieve, or very young.
I have seen films of many of these places (filmed in secret) and in one film three classmates ran from the room, two vomited and the rest of us had nightmares for a long time. In the 50s and 60s the Western Society was booming, and along with it, medical break-throughs. I agree that many people do need medication, shock treatment, even surgery, but what went on in these assylums was something that no fictional horror film could ever match!
The movie “One Flew Over the Coocoo’s Nest” only hit the tip of ice-burg regarding the conditions in such places, but it was enough to raise public awareness and bring about changes through-out the world for the betterment of care for the mentally ill. The movie forced the medical world to start treating human beings as such, and cleaning up the institutions (hopefully) for good. In ‘first world’ medicine, brain surgery is not done with an ice pick any more. …
I just recently drove by the facility in Pendelton Oregon (you see it from the freeway) that was the real world place that “One Flew Over the Coocoo’s Nest”
was based on. I don’t have the facts, but my father, a university professor in Psychology, has told me there was truth behind the story.
Anyway, I don’t like the side effects of some drugs I take, but not talking them is far worse. I think without some anti-depressents I take I would have long since committed suicide because the depression level was so bad. But I also wonder why so many people seem depressed these days. Were people always this depressed, or is some of it modern society and its stress levels? I do know some famous people in history had pretty severe depression and maybe we just recognize it more recently. In my case I suspect I was slightly depressed my entire life, but not enough to suspect. I think I might have had a much better life if some of the modern drugs were available 40 years ago.
Curiously, my shrink performs a large number of electro-shock treatments. Evidently it has progressed quite a bit over the years, and has good results when no drug does. Still, kinda scares the s*&* out of me!
Having worked with so-called mentally ill in institutions and community settings, I can say without hesitation that the system itself is crazy, but those incarcerated in the institutions seem not to be except insofar as they are reacting to the oppression of their daily lives.
For some reason if someone is unhappy they can be drugged into a catatonic stupor to cure whatever pseudo-scientific bullshit label some shrink has stuck on them. Unhappiness doesn’t sound pathological, but depression sure does. Oooh, better write a prescription!
From what I’ve seen, if you can pretend that everything is o.k. then you’re not considered crazy, but if for any reason you question anything, like what the exhaust from your doctor’s Lexus might be doing to the environment, or if you raise the idea that psychiatry is a dangerous pseudo-science that is racist, sexist, and very class based – no crazy rich people, y’all! – or if you raise other issues like the fact that 200,000 Americans die every year as a side effect of prescription drugs and of those 106,000 are hospital in-patients, you might be considered crazy by your spychiatrist. You have to wonder if these are people you want to trust your health to.
Undoubtedly somewhere in their great and mighty tome, the DSM-IV, a.k.a. the Malleus Malificarum, will be at least several labels that will earn you a lifetime prescription to something.
You are not, however, considered crazy if you want to build a bomb that will blow a continent off the side of the planet as long as you have the academic creditionals to help you realize that goal; you are not crazy if you want to invest your hard earned money in companies that build land-mines that blow the legs off civilians. (You are crazy if you ask your shrink if he invests in those companies, though! Pretend that everything is o.k., remember.)
Given the suffering I see daily, I’m willing to be that for every Peter Breggin there are 10,000 Walter Freemans. It’s been very cathartic for me to write the above. (I could go on at length about psychiatry and it’s evil twin, eugenics, the role both played in the Nazi Holocaust, etc., but I’ll spare you at this point.)
A little joke: What’s the difference between psychiatry and a bag of dog sh#t? The bag!
First off, they are psychotropic drugs..not psychoactive. Secondly, my son has adhd/odd and I was against medication for a long time, which lead him to be placed in a special classroom for kids with behavior problems and labeled with a name that preceeded his presence. I put him on meds about a yr and a half ago and he has since then been able to get himself mainstreamed into a “normal” classroom. He has made great strides. All of which would not be possible without his medication. I am proud of him and I think he has a wonderful chance at being a productive person. I am a nurse in a psychiatric hospital and the lesson is clear…take your meds. Simple as that. Do you want to function or not? Sorry to get off topic………….this was supposed to be about lobotomies….
I have just read Mr. Dully’s story. I am only 18 and never really knew about lobotomies and how they worked so i wasnt really conserned until I stumbled apon the book. Howard Dully and thousands of others have been through this teribble medical horror. Many have died and others didnt so any changes in them except for personality differences. I have become so aware of this that i have decided to look further into pyschology and the way the brain works.
Right, brilliant article. Having been a victim of brainwashing myself, I can understand to a certain degree what Dully has been going through. Though I don’t imply that what I went through is anything compared to the permanent damage that he has suffered, for a very long time there, I was very worried that it might have been permanent. It’s been two long years of recovery, but the feelings of violation, inadequacy and chronic depression I suffered with should not be wished upon even your worst enemy. I simply cannot put in words the horror of having your mind messed with, and the lunatics who indulge in these practices are the absolute scum of humanity. Perhaps a nice little article on mind control is in order for this site?
Thank God we still have “electroconvulsive therapy” and “Voodoo” for doctors to play with.
My son leaves lights on during the day, argues about going to bed, argues about everything really… walks around with his head in the clouds most of the time, hes 11 and as normal as the next kid. Why was Howards mom questioning him about his daydreams? I mean, whats the relevance to her life what the kid was daydreaming about?!
Im horrified for Howard. Totally unnecessary ice pik useage.