"It wasn't a case of removing sections of the brain or cutting out pieces, it was severing particular neural pathways," says Jack El-Hai, author of "The Lobotomist," a biography of Freeman.Īt the time, it was practically the only effective treatment for severe depression, schizophrenia, suicidal tendencies and other mental disorders. The idea was that severing those connections and regrowing them could treat symptoms of the mental illness. Lobotomy was a welcome treatment based on the premise that symptoms of mental illness were caused by faulty connections between the frontal lobes and another part of the brain - the thalamus. Robert Lichtenstein, a neurosurgeon who performed lobotomies for treatment of severe pain. "The medical treatments were not effective, and it was an advanced step over what was previously available," says Dr. A few months later the procedure made the front page of The New York Times with the headline "Surgery Used on the Soul Sick." Freeman quickly brought the lobotomy to the United States, first performing it in 1936. Egas Moniz, who later would win the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for the technique. It was first performed in 1935 in Portugal by Dr. Throughout the 1930s, '40s and most of the '50s, the main route of treatment for most of these patients was to keep them institutionalized in often filthy, deplorable conditions until they got better on their own. Many in the medical community consider lobotomies barbaric by today's standards, but there was a time when the procedure was an accepted treatment for those suffering from severe mental illness. That's all Dully can remember of the transorbital or "ice pick" lobotomy performed on him more than 40 years ago. "I remember having big black swollen eyes one day and staying in the hospital for a few days because apparently I had an infection," recalls Dully, now 56, who lives in San Jose, California. (CNN) - Howard Dully was 12 years old when he was told he was going to the hospital for some tests.
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