Do you have your leucotome handy?

It’s hard to believe that a procedure more brutal than trepanation was widely performed in the 20th century. Lobotomy involved severing connections in the brain’s prefrontal lobe with an implement resembling an icepick (a leucotome).

Antonio Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist, invented the procedure in 1935. A year later, Walter Freeman brought the procedure to the US. Freeman was an evangelist for this new form of “psychosurgery”. He drove around the country in his “loboto-mobile” performing the procedure on thousands of hapless patients.

Instead of a leucotome, Freeman used an actual icepick, which he would hammer through the corner of an eye socket using a mallet. He would then jiggle the icepick around in a most unscientific manner. Patients weren’t anaesthetised – rather they were in an induced seizure.

Thankfully, advances in psychiatric drugs saw the procedure fall from favour in the 1960s. Freeman performed his last two icepick lobotomies in 1967. One of the patients died from a brain haemorrhage three days later.

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1eyefishing said:

Best tool yet to keep liberals heads from asploden.
Hence the free giveaway with hydrogen water.
Skinny jeans come with a six-pack of 'em.

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NOYDB said:

They were going to prescribe trepanation, but it got too messy.

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1eyefishing said:

Best tool yet to keep liberals heads from asploden.
Hence the free giveaway with hydrogen water.
Skinny jeans come with a six-pack of 'em.

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snookdoctor said:

all those evil spirits oozing out of skulls, making the sideways slippery and getting stuck on people's shoes.

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Cmp1 said:

Where do you come up with these NOYDB? Hey buddy and I liked your link the other day also,,,, interesting,,,,

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