Modern medicine has a special humanity. But it was not always so.
Decades ago, people in white coats used creepy treatmentssuch as lobotomy.
Simple words about terrible
What it is?
Lobotomy is neurosurgical intervention intended for the correction of mental illness.
The specialist works directly with the brain, destroying the connection of the frontal lobe with other parts of the body or removing the frontal lobe completely.
In the modern world the method of lobotomy no longer apply on practice.
The origins of lobotomy
The ancestor of lobotomy was a doctor with Portuguese roots named Egas Moniz.
It can be said that he borrowed and developed the idea of his fellow neurologists, who in 1934 presented at the convention a bold experiment.
The essence of the experiment was that a group of experts conducted an operation to remove the frontal lobe of the brain to a primate named Becky.
If, prior to the intervention, the monkey was extremely aggressive and uncontrollable, then after the operation it became calm or even passive. Inspired by this example, Egash decided to perform a similar operation on a person.
Since there were no drugs capable of controlling nervous excitement in patients with mental disorders, lobotomy seemed the only way out.
Egas Moniz offered practically a panacea in a world where sick people were simply hidden in psychiatric hospitals, without the right to return to normal social life.
And already in 1936, neurosurgeon Almeida Lima conducted an innovative operation under the strict control of Monish.
Initially, 20 patients underwent the intervention. Seven of them, according to the doctors, are completely cured of the “head ailments”.
Another seven showed positive dynamics and only six patients did not change their behavior in a positive way. Doctors found such a result successful. and decided to put a lobotomy on stream.
How was it done and for what?
Lobotomized in order to correct the state of "violent" patients of psychiatric clinics, suppress uncontrolled aggression, irritability, defiant behavior, cope with depressive states.
Thus, the main purpose of the operation was improving the patient's mental state.
Technique of operation
The very first lobotomy was performed on a woman suffering from paranoia.
During the intervention the surgeon drilled two holes in the skull.
Then, through these holes, alcohol was injected, destroying some of the tissues of the frontal lobe of the brain.
Next Monitz perfected lobotomy by creating tool called "leukotom". The tool was a wire loop that easily cut through the brain tissue.
Psychiatrist Walter Freeman was captured by the idea of conducting a lobotomy to his patients. However, he improved the procedure, abandoning the drilling of the skull.
He decided to simplify the operation so that it could be performed by an ordinary psychiatrist, not just a neurosurgeon. So there was a transorbital lobotomy.
Transorbital Lobotomy
Access to the frontal lobe of the brain carried through the eye socket. After the desired area of skin was decontaminated, the doctor made a small incision in the area over the eyelid.
Then, using a special tool (thin knife) and a surgical hammer, the specialist punched a bone in the orbit area.
A knife was inserted into the hole at an angle of 20 degrees, and with a precise movement the doctor dissecting the nerve channelsconnecting the frontal lobe with the rest of the brain.
After that, the blood was removed from the operated area with a probe, and the wound was sutured.
Freeman turned a lobotomy into practical and terrifying operation.
In 1945, for lack of suitable tools, he pierced the bone roof of the eye orbit kitchen ice knife.
And instead of anesthesia, he suggested using electroshockbecause the brain tissue is not sensitive to pain and the patient experiences discomfort only at the moment of access to the frontal lobe.
Operation in the USSR
In the USSR, doctors suggested osteoplastic trepanation skull for organizing access to brain tissue.
Neurosurgeon Boris Yegorov believed that, in contrast to access through the orbital area, trepanning would allow better control of the course of the operation and the area of intervention.
Victims of the procedure
What mental illness patients have undergone this procedure?
First of all, lobotomy was intended for the treatment of schizophrenia and other severe neurological disorders, which led to a sick person could hurt himself and others.
But over time, the popularity of lobotomy increased greatly, with the result that the incidence of operations that were carried out without real need.
So one pregnant woman was operated only to eliminate headaches. As a result, she no longer returned to normal life and ended her days as a mentally retarded person.
And a guy named Howard Dully underwent surgery at the insistence of his stepmother, who thought that a lobotomy would save Howard from whims.
Homosexuality, which in the past century was considered a mental disorder, was also treated with a lobotomy.
Freeman, who promoted a lobotomy and clearly enjoyed the operation itself and its results, often insisted on intervention without much need. With the help of a lobotomy, he proposed to treat even migraines, bad mood, intolerance and disobedience.
Most often, the victims of lobotomy were women, because of their disenfranchisement in society they were more prone to neurosis, depression, etc.
For some husbands and fathers, lobotomy was simply the way to turn a daughter or wife into a model of submission.
Complications and consequences
Cases in which a lobotomy really helped the patient to conquer the illness and did not cause any special harm is a rarity. Most of the operations gave negative results.
During surgery, the surgeon damages the prefrontal cortex, which turns a person into a personality, with its own characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.
This site completes its formation only to 20 years. And by this moment a person perfectly learns to manage his emotional world, coordinate movements, focus on something, plan and carry out sequential actions.
And of course, due to the formation of the prephronal zone of the brain, the character is becoming. By violating the integrity of this department, the doctor turns the patient into a passive and unemotional creature.
Relatives of people who survived a lobotomy compared a “healed” family member with pet, the shadow of a once loved person and even a vegetable.
After a lobotomy, a person could become more smiling and kinder, not respond to external stimuli through aggression.
But at the same time the patient often fall prey to negative consequences lobotomy method:
- epilepsy;
- meningitis;
- encephalitis;
- uncontrolled urination and bowel movements (due to loss of communication between the brain center and the pelvic organs);
- loss of muscle tone in the upper and lower limbs;
- critical reduction of intellectual indicators;
- lack of emotion;
- sharp increase in body mass index.
The mortality rate for lobotomy reached 6% of all precedents. And the healing effect was obtained only by a small proportion of patients (1/3 of all the operations performed).
Surgical-induced childhood
Dementia, which was the result of surgery on the frontal lobe of the brain, Freeman called the surgical induced childhood.
The doctor assured the relatives of his patients that the patient returned to his childhood for some time in order to relive the stage of the formation of the personality.
In this way, irreparable damage, caused to human health, was taken only for the next stage of treatment.
But there was no improvement even a few years after the procedure, as mental abilities after interfering with brain tissue could not recover.
When was the "execution" canceled?
From the moment of the first operations, doctors appeared who opposed the lobotomy method. The reason was high trauma and a high risk of postoperative complications.
But since there were no benign treatment analogues for people with mental disorders, the operation was gaining popularity.
Native operated patients disabled people with disabilities, wrote complaints and forgiveness about the introduction of a ban on lobotomy.
As a result of public discontent by the 50s of the 20th century, there was a sharp decline and the method was no longer used everywhere.
In the USSR, lobotomy was practiced for only 5 years, after which introduced a ban on the method in 1950. Until 1950, it was carried out only under strict indications and in the absence of positive dynamics in the course of conservative treatment.
In the United States finally abandoned this practice. only in the 70s.
At the same time, the official ban on lobotomy abroad was introduced in the 50s.
And the barbaric method continued to exist. only as illegal private practices.
Now lobotomy sunk into the past and reminds of itself only as creepy stories and facts. But quite recently this unjustifiably cruel technique was applied everywhere, and often even without special indications and consent from the patient.
The real facts about the terrible procedure of the last century:
