That reminds me of the deeply troubling lobotomy storyline in Bojack Horseman. 2500 lobotomies by a single doctor. Makes you wonder how many were used to conveniently silence difficult people -- people whose mental illnesses were seen to be a burden to their surroundings.
https://medium.com/the-dot-and-line/we-need-to-talk-about-bo...
Absolutely insane, that someone believes that randomly destroying parts of the brain will "cure one's depression", or other illnesses (like mental health issues or migraines). This is an insanely depressing read.
Technically, if you think about that, we're doing neurosurgeries to remove parts of the brains when necessary. I could imagine that severing the connection between lobes could affect someone's mental state in a positive way.
However, 2500 surgeries, some of them with great results, some of them resulted in deaths and many in between. It's a game of chances, not a science. Seems like this dude did not understand what is it exactly he is doing and randomly poked holes in people hoping it would work.
It would have been interesting to read a journal of someone who had the procedure.
I think the only think he knew was that he was offering a procedure to turn problematic family members into vegetables, that was the whole business model
I’m reminded of this article. There are very rarely placebo surgeries done, so it is an entire arm of medicine that is running wild without proper controls being done.
https://www.skepdoc.info/ian-harris-on-surgery-the-ultimate-...
If you’ve had a lobotomy surgery, you have a huge tendency to believe it maybe did something positive. An interesting study would have been just tell people that they had a lobotomy. If I had to guess, I bet the success rate would be much higher that actual lobotomy.
You’re writing as though lobotomy is a legitimate procedure that might be a placebo, instead of a nonsensical operation of random brain destruction.
Behind the Bastards has a good couple episodes about Walter Freeman[1]. If you want a good review of exactly how fucked up lobotomies are and what kind of person decides “yeah I could jam an ice pick in a brain”, take a listen.
> As those who watched the procedure described it, a patient would be rendered unconscious by electroshock.
This makes me think that something akin to electroconvulsive therapy would have caused remission.
Electroshock therapy was also a common treatment for mental illness.
My grandma received it several times...to try to deal with her emotions about my abusive alcoholic grandfather.
For as much as older generations criticize Millennials and Gen Z for being "snowflakes," I'm not sure my grandma's "Greatest Generation" actually handled things better.
To the credit of the poor adjunct who taught my freshman psych 101 course in college, and assigned reading Thomas Szasz as part of it, what I've learned is that Thomas Szasz, while outspoken, was not wrong:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Coercion_as_Cure/hYdLS6...
I wonder if medical journals took their origins from this tragedy. I also wonder if it's still a viable treatment for the violently suicidal.
After Rosemary was mildly sedated, "We went through the top of the head," Dr. Watts recalled. "I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch." The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. "We put an instrument inside", he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman asked Rosemary some questions. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backward... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." When Rosemary began to become incoherent, they stopped.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy