The Dark History of Lobotomy

in the past the mentally ill were herded Behind Bars Chained and beaten Insanity was looked upon as a disgraceful mysterious disease with no hope of cure today the picture is changing iron bars are giving way to Modern safety windows and to new ideas on the cause and treatment of mental illness in the annals of medical history there looks one of the most infamous and tragic procedures ever conceived a procedure that's in an attempt to cure a human mind would leave many people as empty husks of their former selves hello everybody shrouded hand here this is a story of the labotomy the 21st century has witnessed significant breakthroughs in human brain research but the path to Modern Neuroscience has been rather dark marked by brutal medical experiments and accidents in 1848 a young Foreman named Phineas cage was at work preparing a railroad bed the terrain was Rocky and uneven requiring multiple holes to be drilled into the Rock and filled with black powder these black powder charges were meant to be covered with clay Phineas used a tamping iron a 13lb metal rod to press each explosive charge tightly into the hole these charges would then be detonated from a safe distance unfortunately things didn't go as planned that day whilst he was distracted Gage's tamping iron must have caught on a piece of rock as he was compressing the explosive charge this caused a spark which ignited the black powder the ensuing explosion turned the tamping iron into a projector tail it shot upwards and struck him in the face just below the cheekbone it went straight up through his head and exited the top of his skull the tamb bingi in itself landed 80 ft away covered in blood and brain matter when his co-workers saw what had happened they were sure that Phineas was dead they rushed to check on him and to their astonishment they discovered that he was still alive and conscious a doctor who later arrived on the scene said I first noticed the wound upon the head before I all lighted from my Carriage the pulsations of the brain being very distinct the top of his head appeared somewhat like an inverted funnel as if some wedge-shaped body had passed From Below upward Mr Gage got up and vomited the effort of vomiting pressed out about half a teacup full of brain which fell upon the floor Phineas had survived the injury or rather s some of him had survived when about 10 weeks later his wounds were healed he got ready to return to work at this point it became clear that something wasn't quite right this man who had once been well-liked and had many friends became fitful irreverent and grossly profane showing little deference for his fellows he quickly lost his job and his friends those who knew Phineas before the accident claimed that he was no longer Gage naturally these events gained a lot of attention and it sparked a debate how was Gage able to survive why did his personality change for the time being science had no answer in 1874 an article was published in the American Journal of medical Sciences in this article a man named Robert bartholo describes the case of a young woman named Mary r she had been brought to him whilst he was working in the hospital Mary was unique as an infant she'd fallen into a fire which had severely burned her scalp her hair had never grown back so she was forced to wear wigs throughout her life unfortunately the friction from a whalebone in her wig caused an ulcer to appear on her head a year later part of a skull had been eroded and there was a hole around 2 in in diameter through this infected wound the pulsations of the brain were plainly seen Mary had been brought to him because her brain seemed to be infected the exposed part was covered in a greenish ooze although bartholo noted that this infection didn't seem to affect Mary's Behavior at this time scientists were conducting experiments on dogs brains injecting corrosive substances into their brains to determine which part controlled specific functions no doctor had ever had the chance to experiment on a living human brain before instead of trying to help the young woman bartholo decided to conduct a series of experiments on her he inserted electrodes into her brain through the infected hole in a skull and ran an electrical current through them in his article baralo wrote when communication was made with the needles her countenance exhibited a great stress and she began to cry very soon the left hand was extended as if in an act of taking hold of some object in front of her the arm presently was agitated with clonic spasms her eyes became fixed with pupils widely dilated lips were blue and she frothed in her mouth her breathing became stenor she lost Consciousness and was violently convulsed on left side the convulsions lasted 5 minutes and was succeeded by coma he wanted to continue these experiments but Mary passed away as the infection spread and covered her entire brain in a thick layer of greenish yellow puss naturally the publication of this article caused a widespread outcry and this effectively stopped any research of that nature in America for the time being that was until Walter Freeman came along Walter Freeman was an American neurologist with a mission he came from a long line of successful medical professionals and was determined to leave his own mark on the history of medicine as a neurologist he'd spent a lot of time working with patients suffering from Psychiatric problems and he was painfully aware that medicine had very little to offer them other than a straight jacket in a mental institution in 1935 Freeman attended a conference in London and he was shown a case involving two chimpanzees Becky and Lucy these chimpanzees had been fairly aggressive and quite difficult to work with the scientists theorized that cutting open skulls and removing the frontal loes would make both these chimps more docile the theory turned out to be correct after parts of their brains were surgically removed Becky and Lucy became more relaxed calmer and they were no longer aggressive the surgery did seem to damage some of their mental abilities after the procedure The Chimps seemed to be making more mistakes during cognitive tests but nevertheless the operation seemed very promising promising enough to try on human brains the procedure was called a leucotomy and it had a success rate of about 35% there was also a significant risk of the individual becoming epileptic disabled or even dying as a result of the procedure whilst these numbers seem pretty shocking today back then there was no real alternative LC otomy offered at least a glimmer of hope for those who were previously considered beyond help with these ideas in mind Walter Freeman returned to the USA he changed the name of the procedure to labotomy and in 1936 with his partner neurosurgeon James wats they performed the first labotomy on a patient in the United States their first patient was Alice Hammet a housewife from Topeka who was plagued by anxiety insomnia and crushing depression from most of her life she was also prone to nervous breakdowns and was plagued by extremely dark thoughts since Freeman wasn't actually a surgeon Watts had to do most of the work he was tasked with drilling holes into both sides of the person's head or on top of the skull he was also responsible for cutting the neural connections between the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain the prefrontal cortex is responsible for complex cognitive behavior personality expression decision making and moderating social behavior essentially everything that makes you who you are as a person it's also responsible for long-term planning so if a person loses access to that part of their brain all of their goals and dreams vanish and so Alice had the operation a hole was drilled and the prefrontal cortex was severed after the operation it seemed like Alice was completely cured when she' recovered from the surgery she no longer seemed depressed her anxiety seemed to be all gone and overall she seemed to be much more calm the Press praised Freeman and the first labotomy in the USA was considered to be a great success this was despite the fact that soon after the labotomy Alice had begun stuttering and at times she seemed to suddenly become disorientated some months after the surgery Alice suffered from a violent convulsion this was likely a side effect of the labotomy the convulsions were so violent that she broke her wrist most disturbing however was that there was a change in her demeanor reportedly for some time after that incident she'd become more indolent and sometimes abusive Alice died from pneumonia in 1941 this was 5 years after her labotomy which meant that it was impossible to observe any long-term side effects from her surgery in the meantime Freeman and wats received more glowing praise from the press the labotomy was called a soul healing procedure with this endorsement from the Press Freeman and wats began to carry out more and more lobotomies by the early 1940s the procedure had gained worldwide popularity this rise in popular ity did bring with it more scrutiny people began to notice that after a labotomy the patient would appear to be altered and not in a good way they appeared to lack any sense of spontaneity no desire to do anything unless they were prompted by another person they often displayed a complete lack of initiative in starting conversations or taking any kind of physical action although in many cases their mental health problems were gone they were left empty Y and lifeless mere Shadows of who they had once been eventually even Freeman had to acknowledged the side effects but remarkably he was able to spin it he turned it into a marketing opportunity he said that laomiz patients made nice household pets Freeman's career flourished by 1941 he was advertising the procedure as being nothing more complicated than a tooth extraction and he said said that it was perfectly safe his most famous patient was Rosemary Kennedy she had been secretly admitted for lobotomy by her father this had been kept secret even from her other family members since her youth she displayed signs of a slight cognitive disability and as she got older Rosemary also experienced seur and violent outbursts she was a difficult child who didn't fit in well with the extremely ambitious Kennedy family Freeman and wats drilled a hole into the top of a skull under local anesthesia Freeman preferred local anesthesia because he could hold a conversation with the patients whilst he observed changes in their behavior whilst what sliced into their brains during her lobotomy Rosemary was asked to sing God Bless America whilst the connections between her frontal lobe and the thalamus were being could tragically it appears that Freeman who was supposed to stop once at the right moment hesitated for too long there was one final cut and rosemary suddenly fell silent at that moment her personality Ambitions and desires were gone forever immediately after the procedure the kennedies realized that something was very wrong with their daughter Rosemary was completely paralyzed and silent it would take months of therapy before she could even move with time she gained partial use of one arm she also had one leg permanently turned inwards and she was unable to control her bodily functions horrified with what had happened to their daughter Rosemary's family locked her away in a mental institution thousands of miles away from home after many months in the institution and many therapy sessions later Rosemary began to speak again sort of until the end of her life she could only speak through a mix of garbled sounds and random words for 20 years nobody from Rosemary's family even visited her it was only after her father Joe Kennedy died from a stroke that Rosemary's mother decided to go and see her despite Rosemary's emotional bluntness she reacted with a panicked rage when she saw saw her mother Rosemary's labotomy had reduced her mental capabilities to the level of a 2-year-old child she required constant care for the rest of her life when asked about this incident her mother reportedly said Rosemary's mind is gone completely and this was due to an accident which I don't really discuss Freeman advertised the labotomy as a precise and simple solution he said it could fix headaches mood swings insomnia and even digestive problems despite what he said it was in fact extremely risky and imprecise neither whats nor Freeman could have any certainty about the exact kind of damage they were causing in the patient's brain although as far as the mental conditions were concerned most patients did show some sign of improvement immediately after the Sur surgery many of them relapsed within a few months this meant that some of Freeman's patients were lobotomized to or three [Music] times in his book titled psychos surgery Freeman discusses cases of labotomy that he deemed to be his most successful which also makes you wonder how bad the cases are that he didn't include in the book One case in the book involves a woman who had struggled with depression for four years Freeman lobotomized her on September the 18th 1937 he wrote for several days afterwards the patient was slightly confused and was somewhat more aggressive and less self-pitying than she had been prior to the operation a second labotomy was performed on her 10 days later after this the woman could only lie quietly in bed with her eyes closed she was neither sleeping nor awake respond in only when spoken to Freeman described it as not appearing happy but no longer moaning and whining as she had previously over time her condition improved and she no longer complained of depression but her loved ones noticed changes in her behavior she made plans but she was unable to follow through whenever she planned to do chores like cooking or washing she was unable to carry them out and she just sat in her chair she would think about going to town but stay home instead she dressed sloppily and often spilled food on herself whilst cooking she often forgot to add simple ingredients in June 1938 she suffered a generalized convulsive attack and Contin to experience these convulsions every one or two months the more lobotomies that he conducted the more obvious it became that even after successful operations patients were left drastically changed when they weren't being prompted to do something people who had had a labotomy tended to just sit motionless with their eyes closed as if they were sleeping but it wasn't true sleep when spoken to loudly enough they would open their eyes and respond without the typical signs that they were waking from a slumber they would give no expression of interest and after answering the patient would just close their eyes again appearing once more to be in this strange half sleep a lot of them seem to take no action of their own they had to be told what to do at all times if they were given a utensil they would just hold it in their hand until somebody told them what to do with it for example if they were sat at a table and told to eat they would immediately scoop up a spoonful of food and hold it in the air in front of them and they would then either put it down or when commanded put it into their mouths it was as if they were robots waiting for the next instruction some family members tormented by the guilt would later claim that they'd been misled by Freeman but still demand grew for the procedure to be carried out with this increasing demand Freeman became frustrated with how long it took to carry out the labotomy plus many mental institutions lacked operating theaters so patients had to be transported to a separate facility then in 1945 he had a flash of inspiration when he saw an ice pick in his kitchen with this device in hand he invented the transorbital labotomy his new method was pretty simple patients would be subjected to electroshocks until they were unconscious then an ice pick would be inserted through the the upper eyelid into the eye socket and hammered through the thin layer of bone at the back of the socket up into the frontal lobe the pick would then be swished back and forth inside the brain severing the connections and then it would be repeated on the other side the procedure took about 10 to 15 minutes and patients were reportedly sent home in taxis shortly after it was done Freeman conducted his first ice pick labotomy in 1946 and he deemed it to be a massive success soon afterwards he purchased a van which he called the lobotomobile and he traveled around the USA performing lobotomies all over the country this greatly increased the rate at which he performed lobotomies sometimes he would do up to 100 in a week this continued for about 9 years however in 1952 the development of effective antipsychotic medication ations meant that the labotomy looked like it would be made obsolete despite this advancement in medicine Freeman remained skeptical and he continued to advocate for lobotomies I mean of course he would it was his primary source of income he frequently argued that these newly developed antipsychotic medications could have unknown and serious side effects and were not safe for use unlike the safe and effective ice picked the brain obviously even after wats had parted away with him Freeman persisted in performing these operations despite the fact that he wasn't a licensed surgeon over time he started to introduce elements of Showmanship to his procedures performing The Ice Pick labotomy in theaters with viewing galleries for interested onlookers he did stunts like performing lobotomies on multiple people at the same time or operating on 25 women in a single day even when a patient died from a brain hemorrhage caused by the lobotomy he didn't stop and he just continued operating on the other patients he also started to lobotomize Children the youngest patient to survive the ice pick labotomy was a 12-year-old boy named Howard dully he had been admitted by his stepmother this woman hated Howard according to her own testimony Howard often daydreamed HE disliked washing and sometimes he turned on the lights when it was still bright outside his stepmother believed that having him lobotomized would make him behave better for quite some time she tried to have him diagnosed with a mental illness but all the doctors that she took him to just shook their heads to them Howard was simply a healthy 12-year-old boy who liked to get up to Mischief then she took him to Dr free based on the information that she gave him Freeman diagnosed the boy with schizophrenia and he recommended a labotomy at 1:30 p.m. on the 16th of September 1960 Howard dully was wheeled into the operating theater strapped to a bed and given a series of electric shocks to render him unconscious and that much he remembers the rest he says is murky miraculously would survived the operation with his personality intact and full control of his body this wasn't the outcome that his stepmother wanted she wanted him docile easy to control in fact his behavior continued to get worse he was eventually sent to a school for children with behavior problems later in life he spent time in jail and eventually he became homeless and addicted to alcohol in his 50s he managed to turn his life life around and he decided to do some research into the procedure that he had done on him as a child he managed to gain access to his medical records and found out that his stepmother had paid Freeman $200 to carry out the labotomy in 2007 Howard dully published his Memoir titled my labotomy in interviews he would later say if you saw me you'd never know that I'd had a lobotomy the only thing you notice is that I'm very tall and weigh about 350 lb but I've always felt different wondered if something's missing from my soul I have no memory of the operation and I never had the courage to ask my family about it I'll never know what I lost in those 10 minutes with Dr Freeman and his ice pick by some miracle it didn't turn me into a zombie Crush my spirits all kill me but it did affect me deeply Walter Freeman's operation was supposed to relieve suffering but in my case it did just the opposite ever since my lobotomy I felt like a freak ashamed Freeman's career ended in 1967 when he accidentally killed yet another patient a housewife during her third labotomy after this incident Freeman was banned from operating throughout his career he performed over 3,500 00 lobotomies and he caused the death of 490 people and left an unknown number of others permanently disabled he spent his remaining days visiting former patients trying to prove the positive effects of lobotomy thankfully he didn't manage to change public opinion and today lobotomy is no longer practiced consigned to the history books as a barbaric and misguided treatment for mental illness so that's the tale of Walter Freeman and the prefrontal labotomy if you found this video interesting I do have another video about a brain surgery that went very wrong the tale of Henry Meson the man who couldn't remember I'll put a link at the end of the video and in the description if you want to check that out so thank you for watching and thank you as always to the patrons for the support it's much appreciated and it really does help me keep making content so thank you until next time goodbye [Music]

in the past the mentally ill were herded Behind Bars Chained and beaten Insanity was looked upon as a disgraceful mysterious disease with no hope of cure today the picture is changing iron bars are giving way to Modern safety windows and to new ideas on the cause and treatment of mental illness in the annals of medical history there looks one of the most infamous and tragic procedures ever conceived a procedure that&#39;s in an attempt to cure a human mind would leave many people as empty husks of their former selves hello everybody shrouded hand here this is a story of the labotomy the 21st century has witnessed significant breakthroughs in human brain research but the path to Modern Neuroscience has been rather dark marked by brutal medical experiments and accidents in 1848 a young Foreman named Phineas cage was at work preparing a railroad bed the terrain was Rocky and uneven requiring multiple holes to be drilled into the Rock and filled with black powder these black powder charges were meant to be covered with clay Phineas used a tamping iron a 13lb metal rod to press each explosive charge tightly into the hole these charges would then be detonated from a safe distance unfortunately things didn&#39;t go as planned that day whilst he was distracted Gage&#39;s tamping iron must have caught on a piece of rock as he was compressing the explosive charge this caused a spark which ignited the black powder the ensuing explosion turned the tamping iron into a projector tail it shot upwards and struck him in the face just below the cheekbone it went straight up through his head and exited the top of his skull the tamb bingi in itself landed 80 ft away covered in blood and brain matter when his co-workers saw what had happened they were sure that Phineas was dead they rushed to check on him and to their astonishment they discovered that he was still alive and conscious a doctor who later arrived on the scene said I first noticed the wound upon the head before I all lighted from my Carriage the pulsations of the brain being very distinct the top of his head appeared somewhat like an inverted funnel as if some wedge-shaped body had passed From Below upward Mr Gage got up and vomited the effort of vomiting pressed out about half a teacup full of brain which fell upon the floor Phineas had survived the injury or rather s some of him had survived when about 10 weeks later his wounds were healed he got ready to return to work at this point it became clear that something wasn&#39;t quite right this man who had once been well-liked and had many friends became fitful irreverent and grossly profane showing little deference for his fellows he quickly lost his job and his friends those who knew Phineas before the accident claimed that he was no longer Gage naturally these events gained a lot of attention and it sparked a debate how was Gage able to survive why did his personality change for the time being science had no answer in 1874 an article was published in the American Journal of medical Sciences in this article a man named Robert bartholo describes the case of a young woman named Mary r she had been brought to him whilst he was working in the hospital Mary was unique as an infant she&#39;d fallen into a fire which had severely burned her scalp her hair had never grown back so she was forced to wear wigs throughout her life unfortunately the friction from a whalebone in her wig caused an ulcer to appear on her head a year later part of a skull had been eroded and there was a hole around 2 in in diameter through this infected wound the pulsations of the brain were plainly seen Mary had been brought to him because her brain seemed to be infected the exposed part was covered in a greenish ooze although bartholo noted that this infection didn&#39;t seem to affect Mary&#39;s Behavior at this time scientists were conducting experiments on dogs brains injecting corrosive substances into their brains to determine which part controlled specific functions no doctor had ever had the chance to experiment on a living human brain before instead of trying to help the young woman bartholo decided to conduct a series of experiments on her he inserted electrodes into her brain through the infected hole in a skull and ran an electrical current through them in his article baralo wrote when communication was made with the needles her countenance exhibited a great stress and she began to cry very soon the left hand was extended as if in an act of taking hold of some object in front of her the arm presently was agitated with clonic spasms her eyes became fixed with pupils widely dilated lips were blue and she frothed in her mouth her breathing became stenor she lost Consciousness and was violently convulsed on left side the convulsions lasted 5 minutes and was succeeded by coma he wanted to continue these experiments but Mary passed away as the infection spread and covered her entire brain in a thick layer of greenish yellow puss naturally the publication of this article caused a widespread outcry and this effectively stopped any research of that nature in America for the time being that was until Walter Freeman came along Walter Freeman was an American neurologist with a mission he came from a long line of successful medical professionals and was determined to leave his own mark on the history of medicine as a neurologist he&#39;d spent a lot of time working with patients suffering from Psychiatric problems and he was painfully aware that medicine had very little to offer them other than a straight jacket in a mental institution in 1935 Freeman attended a conference in London and he was shown a case involving two chimpanzees Becky and Lucy these chimpanzees had been fairly aggressive and quite difficult to work with the scientists theorized that cutting open skulls and removing the frontal loes would make both these chimps more docile the theory turned out to be correct after parts of their brains were surgically removed Becky and Lucy became more relaxed calmer and they were no longer aggressive the surgery did seem to damage some of their mental abilities after the procedure The Chimps seemed to be making more mistakes during cognitive tests but nevertheless the operation seemed very promising promising enough to try on human brains the procedure was called a leucotomy and it had a success rate of about 35% there was also a significant risk of the individual becoming epileptic disabled or even dying as a result of the procedure whilst these numbers seem pretty shocking today back then there was no real alternative LC otomy offered at least a glimmer of hope for those who were previously considered beyond help with these ideas in mind Walter Freeman returned to the USA he changed the name of the procedure to labotomy and in 1936 with his partner neurosurgeon James wats they performed the first labotomy on a patient in the United States their first patient was Alice Hammet a housewife from Topeka who was plagued by anxiety insomnia and crushing depression from most of her life she was also prone to nervous breakdowns and was plagued by extremely dark thoughts since Freeman wasn&#39;t actually a surgeon Watts had to do most of the work he was tasked with drilling holes into both sides of the person&#39;s head or on top of the skull he was also responsible for cutting the neural connections between the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain the prefrontal cortex is responsible for complex cognitive behavior personality expression decision making and moderating social behavior essentially everything that makes you who you are as a person it&#39;s also responsible for long-term planning so if a person loses access to that part of their brain all of their goals and dreams vanish and so Alice had the operation a hole was drilled and the prefrontal cortex was severed after the operation it seemed like Alice was completely cured when she&#39; recovered from the surgery she no longer seemed depressed her anxiety seemed to be all gone and overall she seemed to be much more calm the Press praised Freeman and the first labotomy in the USA was considered to be a great success this was despite the fact that soon after the labotomy Alice had begun stuttering and at times she seemed to suddenly become disorientated some months after the surgery Alice suffered from a violent convulsion this was likely a side effect of the labotomy the convulsions were so violent that she broke her wrist most disturbing however was that there was a change in her demeanor reportedly for some time after that incident she&#39;d become more indolent and sometimes abusive Alice died from pneumonia in 1941 this was 5 years after her labotomy which meant that it was impossible to observe any long-term side effects from her surgery in the meantime Freeman and wats received more glowing praise from the press the labotomy was called a soul healing procedure with this endorsement from the Press Freeman and wats began to carry out more and more lobotomies by the early 1940s the procedure had gained worldwide popularity this rise in popular ity did bring with it more scrutiny people began to notice that after a labotomy the patient would appear to be altered and not in a good way they appeared to lack any sense of spontaneity no desire to do anything unless they were prompted by another person they often displayed a complete lack of initiative in starting conversations or taking any kind of physical action although in many cases their mental health problems were gone they were left empty Y and lifeless mere Shadows of who they had once been eventually even Freeman had to acknowledged the side effects but remarkably he was able to spin it he turned it into a marketing opportunity he said that laomiz patients made nice household pets Freeman&#39;s career flourished by 1941 he was advertising the procedure as being nothing more complicated than a tooth extraction and he said said that it was perfectly safe his most famous patient was Rosemary Kennedy she had been secretly admitted for lobotomy by her father this had been kept secret even from her other family members since her youth she displayed signs of a slight cognitive disability and as she got older Rosemary also experienced seur and violent outbursts she was a difficult child who didn&#39;t fit in well with the extremely ambitious Kennedy family Freeman and wats drilled a hole into the top of a skull under local anesthesia Freeman preferred local anesthesia because he could hold a conversation with the patients whilst he observed changes in their behavior whilst what sliced into their brains during her lobotomy Rosemary was asked to sing God Bless America whilst the connections between her frontal lobe and the thalamus were being could tragically it appears that Freeman who was supposed to stop once at the right moment hesitated for too long there was one final cut and rosemary suddenly fell silent at that moment her personality Ambitions and desires were gone forever immediately after the procedure the kennedies realized that something was very wrong with their daughter Rosemary was completely paralyzed and silent it would take months of therapy before she could even move with time she gained partial use of one arm she also had one leg permanently turned inwards and she was unable to control her bodily functions horrified with what had happened to their daughter Rosemary&#39;s family locked her away in a mental institution thousands of miles away from home after many months in the institution and many therapy sessions later Rosemary began to speak again sort of until the end of her life she could only speak through a mix of garbled sounds and random words for 20 years nobody from Rosemary&#39;s family even visited her it was only after her father Joe Kennedy died from a stroke that Rosemary&#39;s mother decided to go and see her despite Rosemary&#39;s emotional bluntness she reacted with a panicked rage when she saw saw her mother Rosemary&#39;s labotomy had reduced her mental capabilities to the level of a 2-year-old child she required constant care for the rest of her life when asked about this incident her mother reportedly said Rosemary&#39;s mind is gone completely and this was due to an accident which I don&#39;t really discuss Freeman advertised the labotomy as a precise and simple solution he said it could fix headaches mood swings insomnia and even digestive problems despite what he said it was in fact extremely risky and imprecise neither whats nor Freeman could have any certainty about the exact kind of damage they were causing in the patient&#39;s brain although as far as the mental conditions were concerned most patients did show some sign of improvement immediately after the Sur surgery many of them relapsed within a few months this meant that some of Freeman&#39;s patients were lobotomized to or three [Music] times in his book titled psychos surgery Freeman discusses cases of labotomy that he deemed to be his most successful which also makes you wonder how bad the cases are that he didn&#39;t include in the book One case in the book involves a woman who had struggled with depression for four years Freeman lobotomized her on September the 18th 1937 he wrote for several days afterwards the patient was slightly confused and was somewhat more aggressive and less self-pitying than she had been prior to the operation a second labotomy was performed on her 10 days later after this the woman could only lie quietly in bed with her eyes closed she was neither sleeping nor awake respond in only when spoken to Freeman described it as not appearing happy but no longer moaning and whining as she had previously over time her condition improved and she no longer complained of depression but her loved ones noticed changes in her behavior she made plans but she was unable to follow through whenever she planned to do chores like cooking or washing she was unable to carry them out and she just sat in her chair she would think about going to town but stay home instead she dressed sloppily and often spilled food on herself whilst cooking she often forgot to add simple ingredients in June 1938 she suffered a generalized convulsive attack and Contin to experience these convulsions every one or two months the more lobotomies that he conducted the more obvious it became that even after successful operations patients were left drastically changed when they weren&#39;t being prompted to do something people who had had a labotomy tended to just sit motionless with their eyes closed as if they were sleeping but it wasn&#39;t true sleep when spoken to loudly enough they would open their eyes and respond without the typical signs that they were waking from a slumber they would give no expression of interest and after answering the patient would just close their eyes again appearing once more to be in this strange half sleep a lot of them seem to take no action of their own they had to be told what to do at all times if they were given a utensil they would just hold it in their hand until somebody told them what to do with it for example if they were sat at a table and told to eat they would immediately scoop up a spoonful of food and hold it in the air in front of them and they would then either put it down or when commanded put it into their mouths it was as if they were robots waiting for the next instruction some family members tormented by the guilt would later claim that they&#39;d been misled by Freeman but still demand grew for the procedure to be carried out with this increasing demand Freeman became frustrated with how long it took to carry out the labotomy plus many mental institutions lacked operating theaters so patients had to be transported to a separate facility then in 1945 he had a flash of inspiration when he saw an ice pick in his kitchen with this device in hand he invented the transorbital labotomy his new method was pretty simple patients would be subjected to electroshocks until they were unconscious then an ice pick would be inserted through the the upper eyelid into the eye socket and hammered through the thin layer of bone at the back of the socket up into the frontal lobe the pick would then be swished back and forth inside the brain severing the connections and then it would be repeated on the other side the procedure took about 10 to 15 minutes and patients were reportedly sent home in taxis shortly after it was done Freeman conducted his first ice pick labotomy in 1946 and he deemed it to be a massive success soon afterwards he purchased a van which he called the lobotomobile and he traveled around the USA performing lobotomies all over the country this greatly increased the rate at which he performed lobotomies sometimes he would do up to 100 in a week this continued for about 9 years however in 1952 the development of effective antipsychotic medication ations meant that the labotomy looked like it would be made obsolete despite this advancement in medicine Freeman remained skeptical and he continued to advocate for lobotomies I mean of course he would it was his primary source of income he frequently argued that these newly developed antipsychotic medications could have unknown and serious side effects and were not safe for use unlike the safe and effective ice picked the brain obviously even after wats had parted away with him Freeman persisted in performing these operations despite the fact that he wasn&#39;t a licensed surgeon over time he started to introduce elements of Showmanship to his procedures performing The Ice Pick labotomy in theaters with viewing galleries for interested onlookers he did stunts like performing lobotomies on multiple people at the same time or operating on 25 women in a single day even when a patient died from a brain hemorrhage caused by the lobotomy he didn&#39;t stop and he just continued operating on the other patients he also started to lobotomize Children the youngest patient to survive the ice pick labotomy was a 12-year-old boy named Howard dully he had been admitted by his stepmother this woman hated Howard according to her own testimony Howard often daydreamed HE disliked washing and sometimes he turned on the lights when it was still bright outside his stepmother believed that having him lobotomized would make him behave better for quite some time she tried to have him diagnosed with a mental illness but all the doctors that she took him to just shook their heads to them Howard was simply a healthy 12-year-old boy who liked to get up to Mischief then she took him to Dr free based on the information that she gave him Freeman diagnosed the boy with schizophrenia and he recommended a labotomy at 1:30 p.m. on the 16th of September 1960 Howard dully was wheeled into the operating theater strapped to a bed and given a series of electric shocks to render him unconscious and that much he remembers the rest he says is murky miraculously would survived the operation with his personality intact and full control of his body this wasn&#39;t the outcome that his stepmother wanted she wanted him docile easy to control in fact his behavior continued to get worse he was eventually sent to a school for children with behavior problems later in life he spent time in jail and eventually he became homeless and addicted to alcohol in his 50s he managed to turn his life life around and he decided to do some research into the procedure that he had done on him as a child he managed to gain access to his medical records and found out that his stepmother had paid Freeman $200 to carry out the labotomy in 2007 Howard dully published his Memoir titled my labotomy in interviews he would later say if you saw me you&#39;d never know that I&#39;d had a lobotomy the only thing you notice is that I&#39;m very tall and weigh about 350 lb but I&#39;ve always felt different wondered if something&#39;s missing from my soul I have no memory of the operation and I never had the courage to ask my family about it I&#39;ll never know what I lost in those 10 minutes with Dr Freeman and his ice pick by some miracle it didn&#39;t turn me into a zombie Crush my spirits all kill me but it did affect me deeply Walter Freeman&#39;s operation was supposed to relieve suffering but in my case it did just the opposite ever since my lobotomy I felt like a freak ashamed Freeman&#39;s career ended in 1967 when he accidentally killed yet another patient a housewife during her third labotomy after this incident Freeman was banned from operating throughout his career he performed over 3,500 00 lobotomies and he caused the death of 490 people and left an unknown number of others permanently disabled he spent his remaining days visiting former patients trying to prove the positive effects of lobotomy thankfully he didn&#39;t manage to change public opinion and today lobotomy is no longer practiced consigned to the history books as a barbaric and misguided treatment for mental illness so that&#39;s the tale of Walter Freeman and the prefrontal labotomy if you found this video interesting I do have another video about a brain surgery that went very wrong the tale of Henry Meson the man who couldn&#39;t remember I&#39;ll put a link at the end of the video and in the description if you want to check that out so thank you for watching and thank you as always to the patrons for the support it&#39;s much appreciated and it really does help me keep making content so thank you until next time goodbye [Music]

Transcript for:The Dark History of Lobotomy

Transcript for:
The Dark History of Lobotomy