Lobotomy

I AM NOT A DOCTOR

A lobotomy or leucotomy is a type of neurosurgical treatment for a mental or neurological illness that involves disrupting connections in the prefrontal cortex of the brain.

In the past, this technique was employed as a standard procedure in various nations to treat psychiatric illnesses.

The process was contentious from the start, owing in part to a failure to recognize the severity and chronicity of serious and persisting psychiatric diseases, leading to accusations that it was an improper treatment.

The procedure’s inventor, Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz, was awarded the Nobel Medal in Physiology or Medicine in 1949 for his “discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses,” albeit the awarding of the medal was controversial.

From the early 1940s through the 1950s, the procedure’s utilization skyrocketed; by 1951, about 20,000 lobotomies had been performed in the United States, with a correspondingly higher number in the United Kingdom.

Women had more lobotomies than men: a 1951 survey discovered that approximately 60% of American lobotomy patients were female.

Lobotomy was gradually phased out beginning in the 1950s.

People:

Rosemary Kennedy

Rosemary Kennedy, the sister of US President John F. Kennedy, had a lobotomy in 1941, which rendered her handicapped and institutionalized for the remainder of her life.

Rosemary, according to her sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver, regressed when she returned to the United States from the United Kingdom in 1940. Rosemary became “increasingly irritable and difficult” at the age of 22, according to Eunice.

When Rosemary was 23, doctors advised her father that a lobotomy, a type of psychosurgery, would help calm her mood swings and end her infrequent violent outbursts.