LOBOTOMY
Phineas P. Gage, a 19th century railroad worker, suffered an accidental left frontal lobotomy when a spike with which he was tamping dynamite was blown backward through his skull.
From the prestigious American Journal of Psychiatry, 50 years ago:
21 year old "hebephrenic schizophrenic" lobotomized after 30 electroshocks and 29 insulin comas "failed to produce more than temporary improvements....He would laugh and smile inappropriately...The physiological components of tension were present to a marked degree. Following the operation he was paroled to his father...He is now studying engineering."
Hebephrenic Schizophrenia, that was so popular nobody ever gets it anymore. Psychiatry follows the biggest camp. Now it's multiple personality disorder, an epidemic as old as Three Faces of Eve. Life goes to the movies.
"Cadaver with calvarium and brain removed showing the geometrical precision with which the instruments can be placed."
Precise but convenient. In their remarks the authors state "...very little time is required to perform the operation. When Freeman first introduced the procedure to Western State Hospital in August, 1947, 13 patients were operated on in a single afternoon."
The photographs and quotations are from: Jones, CH and Shanklin JG: Transorbital lobotomy in institutional practice. American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol 107, No. 2, August, 1950.
From: Shutts, David: Lobotomy - Resort to the Knife. Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1978
Between 1945 and 1965 an estimated 50,000 lobotomies were carried out in the United States. A Portuguese neurologist named Egaz Moniz read that a monkey named Becky at Yale had been tamed by amputation of her frontal lobes. So he tried it on people.
Moniz honored
with Nobel Prize in 1946
and a postage stamp in 1967.
Originally applied to such non-entities as "hebephrenic schizophrenia" the indications became progressively broader as the brain damaged victims accumulated in institutions.
I've met two recipients of lobotomies: one in his 60's, a more or less permanent resisdent at the Portland VA, presumably received it for one of the early indications such as schizophrenia. The other, in his 20's, was a permanent resident in his own fancy room at Gracie Square Hospital in New York City. He'd had it for obsessive compulsive disorder and it worked: "I used to tear holes in my pants pockets."
I asked both of them the same question: any adverse effects?
The Portland patient thought about it then pointed to the barely perceptible twin dimples in his forehead: "I don't like these holes." The younger man thought it had done him a world of good. He was carefree.
Walter Freeman liked to tell of the man who was getting his no-anesthesia, come and go, icepick lobotomy and just as his frontal tracts were being severed made a joke, a double entendre yet: "Thanks, Doc, you've taken a load off my mind."
Disconnecting the frontal lobes has little immediate noticeable effect. There is no loss of intellect, no impairment of memory, no problem with speech or gait.
Yet, of all the brain damaged Russian soldiers the neuropyschologist Alexander Luria worked to rehabilitate after World War II - the only hopeless cases were those with bilateral frontal lobe injuries.
A century of experiments of nature and man teach that the frontal lobes, most recently evolved, the proud high brow of Homo Sapiens, are involved in our ability to anticipate and project, to plan and strive.
Destroying frontal lobe function destroys ambition.
Lobotomy is a final solution for anxiety. And if you think it's not still being done, go to these websites:
http://neurosurgery.mgh.harvard.edu/cingulot.htm
http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu/research/jenike.html
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