Lobotomy (from ancient Greek λοβός "share" + τομή "cut") is one of the darkest pages of official medicine. It is a grisly neurosurgical operation, which under the guise of treatment was performed on patients suffering from mental disorders. And it was practiced relatively recently - in the 50s of the XX century. The brain is a complexly arranged organ, and you cannot just pick it up and dig deeper into it with a sharp piece of iron. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened during the lobotomy. The results of such surgical procedures were very deplorable.
Lobotomy was developed in 1935 by the Portuguese psychiatrist and neurosurgeon Egas Moniz. Earlier, he heard about an experiment: the chimpanzee had its frontal lobes removed and its behavior changed - it became obedient and calm. Moniz suggested that if you dissect the white matter of the frontal lobes of the human brain, excluding the influence of the frontal lobes on other structures of the central nervous system, then schizophrenia and other mental disorders associated with aggressive behavior can be treated. The first operation under his leadership was carried out in 1936 and was called prefrontal leukotomy: a loop was inserted into the brain with the help of a guidewire, and the brain tissue was damaged by rotational movements. After completing about a hundred such operations and conducting follow-up observation of patients, which consisted of a subjective assessment of the mental state,Moniz announced the success of this operation and began to popularize it. So, in 1936, he published the results of surgical treatment of 20 of his first patients: 7 of them recovered, 7 improved, while 6 did not show any positive dynamics. In fact, Egash Moniz monitored only a few patients, and most of them had never been seen after the operation.
Very soon he had followers in other countries. And in 1949, Egash Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery of the therapeutic effects of leukotomy in certain mental illnesses." Who will argue with the Nobel laureate?
In the early 1940s, lobotomy was already widely used in the United States. During World War II, the psychiatric wards of Veterans Affairs hospitals were filled with many soldiers returning from the front and experiencing severe mental shock. These patients were often in a state of arousal and required many nurses and other paramedics to control them, resulting in high costs. Thus, one of the main reasons for the widespread use of lobotomy was the desire to reduce the cost of maintaining staff.
Veterans Affairs clinics hastily organized courses to accelerate the training of surgeons in lobotomy. The cheap method made it possible to "treat" many thousands of Americans at that time in closed psychiatric institutions, and could reduce the costs of these institutions by $ 1 million a day. Leading newspapers wrote about the success of the lobotomy, drawing public attention to it. It is worth noting that then there were no effective methods of treating mental disorders, and cases of patients returning from closed institutions to society were extremely rare, therefore, the widespread use of lobotomy was welcomed.
Walter Freeman.
The method of transorbital leucotomy ("ice pick lobotomy"), which did not require drilling the patient's skull, was widely used, developed in 1945 by American Walter Freeman. Freeman became the leading advocate of lobotomy. He performed his first lobotomy using electroconvulsive therapy for pain relief. He aimed the tapered end of an ice knife-like surgical instrument at the bone in the eye socket, punched a thin layer of bone with a surgical hammer, and inserted the instrument into the brain. After that, the fibers of the frontal lobes of the brain were dissected by the movement of the knife handle. Freeman argued that the procedure would remove the emotional component from the patient's "mental illness." The first operations were carried out with a real ice pick. Subsequently, Freeman developed special instruments for this purpose - a leucotome, then an orbitoclast. In fact, the entire operation was carried out blindly, and as a result, the surgeon destroyed not only the affected, in his opinion, areas of the brain, but also a significant part of the nearby brain tissue.
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The first studies of lobotomy described positive results, however, as it turned out later, they were carried out without strict adherence to the methodology. It is difficult to evaluate the positive results of lobotomy, since the operations were carried out using practically incomparable techniques on patients with different diagnoses. Whether recovery has come or not - this issue was often decided on the basis of such a pragmatic criterion as increasing the patient's controllability. After the operation, the patients immediately became calm and passive; many violent patients, subject to fits of rage, became, according to Freeman, taciturn and submissive. As a result, they were discharged from psychiatric hospitals, but how much they really "recovered" remained unclear, since they were usually not examined later.
Freeman coined a special term for people who had recently undergone a lobotomy: surgically induced childhood. He believed that patients' lack of normal mental abilities, distraction, stupor, and other characteristic consequences of lobotomy occur because the patient regresses - returns to a younger mental age. But at the same time, Freeman did not realize that the personality could be harmed. Most likely, he believed that the patient would eventually "grow up" again: the re-maturation would pass quickly and eventually lead to a full recovery. And he suggested treating the sick (even adults) in the same way as they would treat disobedient children. He even suggested that parents spank an adult daughter if she misbehaved, and later give her ice cream and kiss her. Regressive behaviorswhich often appeared in patients after lobotomy, over time disappeared in only a few: as a rule, the person remained mentally and emotionally paralyzed for the rest of his life. Many patients were unable to control urination. They really behaved like very naughty children: they were instantly excited by various stimuli, showed attention deficit disorder and uncontrollable outbursts of anger.
In the 1950s, more thorough studies revealed that, in addition to the lethal outcome, which was observed in 1.5-6% of operated patients, lobotomy causes such consequences as seizures, large weight gain, loss of motor coordination, partial paralysis, urinary incontinence. and others. It also led to significant intellectual impairments in patients, weakening of control over their own behavior, apathy, emotional instability, emotional dullness, lack of initiative and inability to carry out purposeful activities, speech disorders. After lobotomy, many patients were deprived of the opportunity to think critically, to predict the further course of events, were unable to make plans for the future and perform any work, except the most primitive. As Freeman himself noted,after hundreds of operations performed by him, about a quarter of patients were left to live with the intellectual capabilities of a pet, but “we are quite happy with these people …”. He also argued that frontal lobotomy often causes epileptic seizures, and the timing of their onset was unpredictable: in some patients they occurred soon after surgery, in others after 5-10 years. Epilepsy in patients who underwent lobotomy developed in 30 cases out of 100.developed in 30 cases out of 100.developed in 30 cases out of 100.
Even in those cases when aggressiveness, delirium, hallucinations or depression were stopped in patients as a result of the use of lobotomy, after 5-15 years, nerve fibers from the frontal lobes often grew back into the medulla, and delusions, hallucinations, aggressiveness resumed or depressive ones developed again phase. An attempt to repeat the lobotomy led to a further increase in intellectual deficit.
In the early 1950s, about 5,000 lobotomies were performed annually in the United States. Between 1936 and the late 1950s, 40,000 to 50,000 Americans underwent lobotomies. The indications were not only schizophrenia, but also severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. The operations were carried out mainly in non-sterile conditions. Lobotomy was often performed by doctors who did not have surgical training, which was one of the abuses of this psychosurgical intervention. Without training as a surgeon, Freeman, nevertheless, performed about 3,500 such operations, traveling around the country in his own van, which he called "lobotomobile". He rode it around the country offering "miraculous cures" and performed operations right in front of the audience, in the spirit of a circus show.
The decline of lobotomy began in the 1950s after the serious neurological complications of the operation became apparent. In the future, lobotomy was prohibited by law in many countries. In the USSR, lobotomy was officially banned in 1950.
Many people have asked for an appeal against Moniz's Nobel Prize. They complained that they themselves or their relatives were not only not cured, but also caused irreparable damage. However, the award was never withdrawn, despite the recognition of the failure of lobotomy as a method of therapy and its prohibition in many countries. Based on this, we can draw a conclusion about the degree of trust in various “scientific discoveries”, including those whose authors received the Nobel Prize for them.
Output
So, in the 1940s and 1950s, lobotomy was considered a scientifically proven method of treating certain mental disorders. And if any doctor doubted this barbaric procedure, he would be considered ignorant or inadequate. Moreover, in 1949, the inventor of this procedure, Dr. Antonio Egas Moniz, received the Nobel Prize for his discovery. Lobotomy was considered the standard of care, and any neurosurgeon who did not perform this routine procedure was considered unqualified. Now, looking back in time, we understand how ignorant those doctors were, and how dangerous this procedure was. Thousands of patients as a result of this procedure have lost their own identity, in fact, turning into a "vegetable".
Therefore, whenever you hear someone say the phrase “scientifically proven method” (or evidence-based medicine), remember that just that method was lobotomy. When talking about “standards of care,” be aware that these standards are often not based on reliable scientific research, but on the opinion of only a few “experts” in a particular area.
There are no “scientifically proven” methods or facts. All facts need to be questioned and further double-checked through scientific research.
The “standard of care” is a false concept, which implies that we have learned everything there is to know about this or that subject, and that this standard should not be questioned. Think, study, observe, investigate, challenge existing "truths." We update our knowledge over time.
It should also be noted that many drugs that were later withdrawn from the market as dangerous to health or even life, at one time entered the market, being recognized as safe for use. Those. the safety and effectiveness of these drugs was also considered scientifically proven. An example of such a drug is Thalidomide, which has killed thousands of children. In the 1950s and 60s, this drug was prescribed to pregnant women as a safe sleeping pill. As a result, thousands of babies were born without limbs. Many of them died after a short time, and those who survived were forced to suffer all their lives, being imprisoned in their defective bodies. Read more about this story at the link below.
All such stories tell us that for the sake of our own safety ANY statements should be questioned, even “scientifically based” and regardless of the authority of the source. It should be understood that in our time, science most often serves big business, and in the pursuit of profit, the manufacturer will pay for any scientific research (or their imitation) that will “prove” the safety of anything, even if thousands of people suffer from it.
