Lobotomies

Are something you vaguely know about, but don't really ever investigate properly. A lobotomy as in sticking an ice pick in your eye socket shoving it about a bit then whacking the other end with a hammer to detach the frontal lobe of your brain. The surgery was invented by an Estonian then developed and popularised by Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egaz Moniz who actually won the Nobel Prize in 1949 for Medicine. But the one you really want to watch is Dr. Walter Freeman and his 'lobotomobile' who was free and easy with sticking ice picks in four year old eyes. It's very interesting, not only the varying effects of the procedure but the motivations for doing so and the legal implications - when patients are 'retarded' as many old medical journals so eloquently put it (therefore unable to give consent), or when families make the choice. Tennessee Williams' sister Rose was given a pre-frontal lobotomy, a decision which he never forgave his mother for, as was J.F. Kennedy's sister whose lobotomy Dr. Freeman botched leaving her pretty much vegetative. Of course the possibility of a 'miracle cure' for mental illness has an untenable appeal and it must be taken into account this was years ago and doctors weren't questioned but then I think icepick, 6% mortality rate, local anaesthetic, PVS and frothing mouths and wonder why lobotomies were only completely abolished in the late eighties.