Lobotomy victim speaks out

RedGlitter · Post by **RedGlitter** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:41 am

I almost put this under "Crimes and Trials." That's where it rightfully should go, under crimes and the "trials" of another human being.

I read about Howard Dully a few years ago when I was doing some research on lobotomy and mental health "treatments" of the past. In 1960, Howard was 12 years old and the youngest person to have undergone transorbital "ice pick" lobotomy at the hands of Dr Walter Freeman. It was requested by his father and stepmother because Howard was "unruly." By Howard's account, he was just a basic pre-adolescent boy. It took Howard until now to get his life back. He has written a book called "My Lobotomy" and also talks about it at this website: http://tinyurl.com/d6em2

Of course most people aren't going to want to read about such gruesome things, but what was done to thousands of people (over 3,000 ice pick lobotomies by Walter Freeman alone) in the name of medical "care" must never be forgotten or it might happen again.

Attached files

theia · Post by **theia** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:50 am

Red, you might be interested in reading Elaine Showalter's The Female Malady - Woman, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980. Some rather awful procedures were being carried out, and actually not so long ago.

RedGlitter · Post by **RedGlitter** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:55 am

Thank you, Theia. I just put that on my Amazon Wish List. I will get that book.

RedGlitter · Post by **RedGlitter** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:05 am

You're welcome, RJ!

Nomad · Post by **Nomad** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 8:07 am

Jimbo's been speaking out for years now.

"More ! I want more !"

weeder · Post by **weeder** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 4:38 pm

Dr. Freeman must have been buddies with Dr. DeJarnett the physician here in Virginia who decided that sterilization was the way to go for people with mental problems. He steralized hundreads of people here at the DeJarnett center. These men are controll freaks who think they are Gods. I feel so bad for the victims, like the one in this story. There are unfortunately men just like him, running around today. Like the ones who suggest total hysterectomys for women complaining of cramps.

CARLA · Post by **CARLA** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 4:47 pm

Tragic what we allow other to do to us in the name of science and medicine.

I can't imagine.

RedGlitter · Post by **RedGlitter** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:09 pm

Anyone interested in how lobotomy played out in society should look into the late actress Frances Farmer. She wasn't mentally ill but she did not fit the "little lady" stereotype that was popular in her time. She was brash and outspoken and this was looked upon at the time as unfeminine and ill. So they lobotomized her as a way of controlling her. And in her case, it left her completely devoid of emotion. They destroyed the person she was simply because she didn't fit the man's world she was living in. There is a movie and several books written about her.

gmc · Post by **gmc** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 3:45 am

In those days women who had illegitimate children could find themselves in mental hospitals.

If you really want to depress yourself do a search under eugenics United states ( it was a frighteningly widespread practice throughout the world)

Raven · Post by **Raven** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:05 am

I just love these 'do gooders' who havent a clue as to what they are talking about! Bleeding hearts who are basically medically ignorant. Frontal lobe lobotomy was used mostly to control behavior of those who are criminally insane. Only folks who had money and influence used this method to restrain their children ie. Frances Farmer, Rose Kennedy, etc. Have you ever witnessed the suffering of someone who had exceptional schizophrenia? By detaching the front lobe of the brain, you decrease their violent behavior. There are pro's and cons to this procedure. By the way.......this procedure is still done in Great Britain when other means are not successful with medication or electro shock.

If thorazine doesnt work, you get lobotmized. They also used this procedure briefly to try to cure migraine.

Now where would you be without your prozac? How about if you drop dead of a heart attack? Arent you reassured that someone may put a couple of electric paddles to your chest to revive you? How do you think this came about? Well now that you ask, I'll tell you! By grotesque experiments with corpses in the 18th and 19th centuries. Google up Burke and Hare for details. Now lets talk anathesia. Who do you figure ever discovered that? A british dentist. It's called chloroform. I guess if you dont want to benefit from what modern medicine can do for you, then you can complain and object. But if you take medicine for anything or enjoy rehab for any injury, if you have had ANY kind of operation to fix or correct, or even to save, then you have the stuff of nightmares to thank for it!

RedGlitter · Post by **RedGlitter** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:20 am

gmc;761625 wrote: In those days women who had illegitimate children could find themselves in mental hospitals.

If you really want to depress yourself do a search under eugenics United states ( it was a frighteningly widespread practice throughout the world)

Yes, it's hard to believe we could have let that happen.

Raven;761790 wrote: I just love these 'do gooders' who havent a clue as to what they are talking about! Bleeding hearts who are basically medically ignorant. Frontal lobe lobotomy was used mostly to control behavior of those who are criminally insane. Only folks who had money and influence used this method to restrain their children blah blah SNIP

:wah: Wow Raven. If you actually believe that part I've bolded, it would be you who doesn't know what you're talking about. You need to do some more research on the history of mental health before you try to enlighten anyone else. You could start by telling Howard Dully his lobotomy didn't happen because his parents weren't rich. He might tell you you're full of it though.

And if you think only the criminally insane were lobotomized, try talking to actual victims who weren't criminally insane. Some of them are still alive to tell you about it. It upsets me when I see someone arrogantly espouse misleading BS under the guise of "knowledge." If you don't know what you're talking about, then please don't.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:29 am

RedGlitter;761801 wrote: Yes, it's hard to believe we could have let that happen.

:wah: Wow Raven. If you actually believe that part I've bolded, it would be you who doesn't know what you're talking about. You need to do some more research on the history of mental health before you try to enlighten anyone else. You could start by telling Howard Dully his lobotomy didn't happen because his parents weren't rich. He might tell you you're full of it though.

And if you think only the criminally insane were lobotomized, try talking to actual victims who weren't criminally insane. Some of them are still alive to tell you about it. It upsets me when I see someone arrogantly espouse misleading BS under the guise of "knowledge." If you don't know what you're talking about, then please don't.
As a nurse who has actually taken care of them, I can assure you I DO know what I am talking about. 1) In the early 1900s, relatives frequently committed their loved ones to long stays in understaffed, overcrowded, and often filthy mental institutions. The therapeutic options for severe mental illness were quite limited. One option, the lobotomy, also known as leucotomy, was devised in 1935 by the Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz (1874-1955). It involved drilling holes in the skull and using a blade to sever nerve fibers running from the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain. Moniz believed that psychiatric symptoms were caused by faulty nerve connections established over a period of years. If these nerves were severed and new connections were allowed to form, he postulated, patients' symptoms would improve. Lobotomies were originally used to treat patients with depression but were later often performed to treat schizophrenic patients suffering from agitation and paranoid delusions.

2) The principal US proponent of lobotomy was the neurologist Walter J. Freeman, of George Washington University Medical School. In June 1937, at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association, Freeman and his colleague James W. Watts, a neurosurgeon, presented data on 20 patients who had undergone lobotomy.{1,2] Their paper launched a fierce debate on the procedure. On the one hand, certain members of the medical profession consistently condemned it as brutal, unscientific, and harmful. This appears to have been the case with the 1941 lobotomy performed on Rosemary Kennedy, the mildly retarded sister of John F. Kennedy, whose cognitive functions were severely worsened by the operation. The negative image of lobotomy entered the popular culture through Ken Kesey's 1962 novel ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST and the movie based on it, in which the rebellious hero becomes nearly catatonic after undergoing the operation.

3) On the other hand, Freeman's data painted quite a different picture. The condition of 13 of the 20 patients, he and Watts claimed, had improved. In one case, a 63-year-old housewife who had had increasing anxiety and agitation for a year, they said, "now manages home and household accounts, enjoys people, attends theater, drives her own car."[2] Bolstered by such results, which were confirmed by later studies, Freeman's enthusiasm for lobotomy increased. In 1946, he devised the so-called transorbital lobotomy, in which he used a mallet to pound an ice pick through the patient's eye socket into the brain, then moved the pick around blindly to sever the nerve fibers. He traveled the world promoting his new procedure.

4) Certain physicians, especially those who treated the roughly 400,000 patients in state mental hospitals, embraced the lobotomy. So did the media, thanks in part to Freeman's showmanship. Tens of thousands of lobotomies were performed in the United States before the introduction of chlorpromazine and other neuroleptic medications made the operation all but obsolete by the 1960s. In 1949, Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for inventing the procedure.

5) One of the virtues of historical scholarship is its dynamism: each scholar, building on new information and insights, can revise the conclusions of earlier works. The first book to evaluate lobotomy, Elliot S. Valenstein's GREAT AND DESPERATE CURES,[3] was highly critical of Freeman and his operation, which Valenstein saw as providing a cautionary tale about overzealous physicians. Joel Braslow's MENTAL ILLS AND BODILY CURES argued that a major motivation for lobotomies was to create "apathetic, indifferent, and docile" patients who would be more compliant than they had been.[4] But Jack D. Pressman, in LAST RESORT, emphasized the importance of evaluating historical events within the context of their own time.[5] Although the notion of cutting brain tissue in order to make people submissive is repugnant from our modern perspective, the ability to discharge psychiatric patients even to a limited existence at home was perceived as a therapeutic triumph in the 1940s and 1950s.

References:

1. El-Hai J. The lobotomist: a maverick medical genius and his tragic quest to rid the world of mental illness. New York: Wiley, 2005

2. Laurence WL. Surgery used on the soul-sick: relief of obsessions is reported. New York Times. June 7, 1937:1, 10

3. Valenstein ES. Great and desperate cures: the rise and decline of psychosurgery and other radical treatments for mental illness. New York: Basic Books, 1986

4. Braslow J. Mental ills and bodily cures: psychiatric treatment in the first half of the twentieth century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997

5. Pressman JD. Last resort: psychosurgery and the limits of medicine. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998

New Engl. J. Med. http://www.nejm.org

Here ya go, if you have a moment to be educated on the history of it. And how is knowing about something being 'arrogant'?

grh · Post by **grh** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:36 am

Raven;761806 wrote: As a nurse who has actually taken care of them, I can assure you I DO know what I am talking about. 1) In the early 1900s, relatives frequently committed their loved ones to long stays in understaffed, overcrowded, and often filthy mental institutions. The therapeutic options for severe mental illness were quite limited. One option, the lobotomy, also known as leucotomy, was devised in 1935 by the Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz (1874-1955). It involved drilling holes in the skull and using a blade to sever nerve fibers running from the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain. Moniz believed that psychiatric symptoms were caused by faulty nerve connections established over a period of years. If these nerves were severed and new connections were allowed to form, he postulated, patients' symptoms would improve. Lobotomies were originally used to treat patients with depression but were later often performed to treat schizophrenic patients suffering from agitation and paranoid delusions.

2) The principal US proponent of lobotomy was the neurologist Walter J. Freeman, of George Washington University Medical School. In June 1937, at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association, Freeman and his colleague James W. Watts, a neurosurgeon, presented data on 20 patients who had undergone lobotomy.{1,2] Their paper launched a fierce debate on the procedure. On the one hand, certain members of the medical profession consistently condemned it as brutal, unscientific, and harmful. This appears to have been the case with the 1941 lobotomy performed on Rosemary Kennedy, the mildly retarded sister of John F. Kennedy, whose cognitive functions were severely worsened by the operation. The negative image of lobotomy entered the popular culture through Ken Kesey's 1962 novel ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST and the movie based on it, in which the rebellious hero becomes nearly catatonic after undergoing the operation.

3) On the other hand, Freeman's data painted quite a different picture. The condition of 13 of the 20 patients, he and Watts claimed, had improved. In one case, a 63-year-old housewife who had had increasing anxiety and agitation for a year, they said, "now manages home and household accounts, enjoys people, attends theater, drives her own car."[2] Bolstered by such results, which were confirmed by later studies, Freeman's enthusiasm for lobotomy increased. In 1946, he devised the so-called transorbital lobotomy, in which he used a mallet to pound an ice pick through the patient's eye socket into the brain, then moved the pick around blindly to sever the nerve fibers. He traveled the world promoting his new procedure.

4) Certain physicians, especially those who treated the roughly 400,000 patients in state mental hospitals, embraced the lobotomy. So did the media, thanks in part to Freeman's showmanship. Tens of thousands of lobotomies were performed in the United States before the introduction of chlorpromazine and other neuroleptic medications made the operation all but obsolete by the 1960s. In 1949, Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for inventing the procedure.

5) One of the virtues of historical scholarship is its dynamism: each scholar, building on new information and insights, can revise the conclusions of earlier works. The first book to evaluate lobotomy, Elliot S. Valenstein's GREAT AND DESPERATE CURES,[3] was highly critical of Freeman and his operation, which Valenstein saw as providing a cautionary tale about overzealous physicians. Joel Braslow's MENTAL ILLS AND BODILY CURES argued that a major motivation for lobotomies was to create "apathetic, indifferent, and docile" patients who would be more compliant than they had been.[4] But Jack D. Pressman, in LAST RESORT, emphasized the importance of evaluating historical events within the context of their own time.[5] Although the notion of cutting brain tissue in order to make people submissive is repugnant from our modern perspective, the ability to discharge psychiatric patients even to a limited existence at home was perceived as a therapeutic triumph in the 1940s and 1950s.

References:

1. El-Hai J. The lobotomist: a maverick medical genius and his tragic quest to rid the world of mental illness. New York: Wiley, 2005

2. Laurence WL. Surgery used on the soul-sick: relief of obsessions is reported. New York Times. June 7, 1937:1, 10

3. Valenstein ES. Great and desperate cures: the rise and decline of psychosurgery and other radical treatments for mental illness. New York: Basic Books, 1986

4. Braslow J. Mental ills and bodily cures: psychiatric treatment in the first half of the twentieth century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997

5. Pressman JD. Last resort: psychosurgery and the limits of medicine. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998

New Engl. J. Med. http://www.nejm.org

Here ya go, if you have a moment to be educated on the history of it. And how is knowing about something being 'arrogant'?

You Rock!:-4:-4

RedGlitter · Post by **RedGlitter** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:43 am

Raven, most of that I am already familiar with, however you are egregiously amiss in failing to acknowledge the misuse of lobotomy and the people who suffered from the procedure and even died from it, some of those being Freeman's patients in fact. You need to present all facets of this, not just what you were taught in medical school.

I am very familiar with the mental health field and I am always trying to learn more about it. It is an ongoing thing. Many horrific things were done to people all under the guise of "care." They are documented by many including some doctors who spoke out against them. The arrogance I pointed out is not from having knowledge, it is from the obnoxious way you presented your case.

If you want to contribute to the discussion, that's fine but get ALL your facts straight first.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:49 am

I just think we should all be on the same page if we are to discuss something! How 'bout you?:-3

Raven · Post by **Raven** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:52 am

RedGlitter;761819 wrote: Raven, most of that I am already familiar with, however you are egregiously amiss in failing to acknowledge the misuse of lobotomy and the people who suffered from the procedure and even died from it, some of those being Freeman's patients in fact. You need to present all facets of this, not just what you were taught in medical school.

I am very familiar with the mental health field and I am always trying to learn more about it. It is an ongoing thing. Many horrific things were done to people all under the guise of "care." They are documented by many including some doctors who spoke out against them. The arrogance I pointed out is not from having knowledge, it is from the obnoxious way you presented your case.

If you want to contribute to the discussion, that's fine but get ALL your facts straight first.
LOL! My facts are perfectly straight. I already made my point. Things can and do go wrong. But being in medicine, you have to be able to look dispassionately at results.

yaaarrrgg · Post by **yaaarrrgg** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:05 am

What I don't get about lobotomies ... doesn't the frontal lobe handle a lot of impulse control? Seems like damage to that area could actually make undesired behavior worse.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 12:24 pm

yaaarrrgg;761844 wrote: What I don't get about lobotomies ... doesn't the frontal lobe handle a lot of impulse control? Seems like damage to that area could actually make undesired behavior worse.
Nope. What it can potentially do, is render you personality-less. It can involve memory, as your short term memory is located in your frontal lobe. But what it AIMS to do, is curb violent and aggressive behavior.

yaaarrrgg · Post by **yaaarrrgg** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 12:33 pm

Raven;762062 wrote: Nope. What it can potentially do, is render you personality-less. It can involve memory, as your short term memory is located in your frontal lobe. But what it AIMS to do, is curb violent and aggressive behavior.

Hmmm ... well my memory is fuzzy so I just looked it up in wikipedia:

The frontal lobes have been found to play a part in impulse control, judgment, language production, working memory, motor function, sexual behavior, socialization, problem solving initiation, facial movement, planning abilities, coordinating, and motivation. The frontal lobes assist in planning, coordinating, controlling, and executing behavior.

Which seems to me like that's the last part of the brain you'd want to damage. I knew a person who smacked her bike into telephone pole and possibly suffered some frontal lobe damage ... the result was not good.

YZGI · Post by **YZGI** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 1:32 pm

Where is nurse Ratchet when you need her?

grh · Post by **grh** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 1:38 pm

YZGI;762086 wrote: Where is nurse Ratchet when you need her?

Oh, I think she's here amongst us...:sneaky:

YZGI · Post by **YZGI** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 1:48 pm

grh;762088 wrote: Oh, I think she's here amongst us...:sneaky:
:yh_rotfl:yh_rotfl:yh_rotfl