Ain’t That A Pick In The Head— The Gruesome History Of Lobotomies —

By Honey Morales—

Graphic Content Warning:

Many thousands of lobotomies were performed around the world in the middle of the twentieth century. The procedure severed connections to the prefrontal cortex to alleviate mental illness symptoms or make patients more manageable in general. Methods used to accomplish this included hammering an ice pick into the eye socket and injecting alcohol directly into the brain.

An icepick was hammered through the eye socket and into the brain, where it "wriggled around," often leaving the patient in a vegetative state, and it was the most brutal, barbaric, and infamous medical procedure in history.

After drilling holes in human skulls, a Portuguese neurologist performed the first lobotomy. However, the word "lobotomy" did not become well-known and feared until an American psychiatrist adopted the procedure, using an icepick and hammer.

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy," Dorothy Parker famously said. ——

Even so, word of the 10-minute lobotomy procedure spread like wildfire, and thousands of people eventually had one.

The failure to inform the public of the terrible consequences is one of the tragedy's central elements. Photos of a "manic-looking" individual, taken before treatment, were widely disseminated, alongside photos of the same individual, taken after treatment, looking relaxed and even happy.

Few understood that the "after picture" frequently depicted a patient who looked less human and more like a zombie. The icepick lobotomy gained notoriety as the medical practice that "turned lunatics into idiots" in the years that followed.

One of the worst medical disasters ever occurred 84 years ago this month, serving as a chilling cautionary tale about the dangers of implementing a "revolutionary new treatment" before it has been thoroughly tested. We'll also examine the case of the most famous patient, US President John F. Kennedy's sister Rosemary, and one of the youngest patients, a 12-year-old girl.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, when lobotomies were at their peak in popularity, the social stigma associated with mental illness was enormous. There weren't many alternatives to committing a family member to a mental hospital. Clinical use of antipsychotic medications like clozapine did not begin until the 1970s.

Drilling holes in the skull, pouring alcohol into the frontal cortex to sever the nerves, and coring sections of the brain with hollow needles were how Portuguese neurologist Antonia Moniz performed the first lobotomy in 1935. Patients who were written off as hopeless were offered this procedure, which he called a "leucotomy," in the hopes that it would alleviate their symptoms of depression and schizophrenia.

We now know that his treatment was cruel and that the fact that he wasn't a doctor ought to have sent shivers up people's spines. Despite this, Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1949. Many people have demanded that his award be taken away, but so far, nobody has listened.

Psychosurgery was first proposed by Swiss neurologist Gottlieb Burckhardt, who claimed a 50% success rate in treating schizophrenic patients. Burckhardt claimed that the patients seemed more at ease after the operation, despite his colleagues' criticisms. It was more likely that the patients were in a "zombie-like" or vegetative state, where they were unable to speak for themselves or make decisions.

The horrific procedure, however, was only getting started.

Neuropsychiatrist Walter Freeman of the United States was so taken with Moniz's findings that he decided to conduct his experiments. As Freeman saw it, cutting up the brain was a way to remove the emotions that he believed were at the root of mental illness.

Freeman performed the first frontal lobotomy in the United States on 63-year-old Alice Hood Hammatt, a housewife from Kansas who was thought to be suffering from anxiety and depression after practising for a few weeks on cadavers.

Holes were drilled in Hammatt's skull over the left and right frontal lobes with the help of Dr. James Watt. After creating a hole in the patient's left side, a leucotome (a thin shaft) was inserted into the uncovered region of the brain.

He declared the operation a success an hour later, despite Hammatt having a convulsion in the weeks after it. (Hammatt passed away five years after her operation, but she avoided mental hospitals in her final years).

Freeman conceived a new strategy in response to this apparent success. He was thinking of ways to perform lobotomies without having to drill holes in patients' skulls. As a result, he resumed his experiments on human corpses to find a less invasive way to study the brain. He used an ice pick he found in the freezer.

When Freeman realized he could reach the brain by inserting the icepick through the orbits of the eyes, he gave the procedure a fancy name—the "transorbital lobotomy"—but the common name "icepick lobotomy" stuck.

The brutal procedure caused the deaths of at least 490 people and left thousands more in a persistent vegetative state.

The "icepick" lobotomy procedure was as follows:

To begin, the patient was either electrocuted or given a local anesthetic to make him or her unconscious Conditional on one's state of mind.

The icepick was then inserted above the patient's eyeball. Then it was driven into the thin bone just above the eye with a hammer, then wiggled back and forth to cut off the supply to the prefrontal cortex, which is located in the frontal lobes of the brain.

It's hard to believe that the brain, the most complex part of the human body, can be hammered with an icepick while being swivelled back and forth.

In at least a third of cases, patients became compliant, docile, and mute with childlike behaviour after the operation, which lasted only about 10 minutes.

Medical professionals eventually began to speak out against the gruesome practice of lobotomy.

Russia, which banned lobotomies in the 1970s because of their perceived "inhumanity," was just one of many countries to do so at the time.

Many thousands of lobotomies were performed around the world in the middle of the twentieth century. The procedure severed connections to the prefrontal cortex to alleviate mental illness symptoms or make patients more manageable in general. Methods used to accomplish this included hammering an ice pick into the eye socket and injecting alcohol directly into the brain. Now we can look back on lobotomies with horror, but how did they get started, why did they become a medical "cure-all," and what happened to the patients who underwent them, often against their will, is a mystery.