Icepick lobotomies are the stuff of horror movies for many people. It seems barbaric to destroy parts of the brain to make a person conform to society or to try and rehabilitate a thief or criminal.
Back when the icepick lobotomy became all the rage, doctors were testing out the procedure on just about anyone they could get their hands on, from the mentally ill to the incarcerated. Here are five lobotomies performed in the past.
An End To The Devil’s Minions
Can you imagine what it must have been like to have been kept in an asylum for forty-six years? That is where a Honolulu woman was kept for having a persecution complex. She also believed that the devil’s helpers were coming to drag her down into the fiery pit.
The woman lived in misery every days, so the doctors decided that she would be the perfect candidate for an experimental lobotomy to see if it would make her “normal.” A witness to the operation wrote in 1944:
“Then I saw the operation performed on her, the drilling of her skull on each side of the head, between the ears and the temple, the expert severing of the connecting ‘wires’ between the frontal lobes of the brain and the thalamus.”
The woman was placed under a local anesthetic for the operation and survived it, unlike many before her.
After the operation, her personality was different. She was described as having a peaceful look in her eyes, she gained some weight, and appeared motherly. Her memory appeared unaffected and she was finally able to carry on an intelligent conversation.
Pain Management
In 1946 there were new discoveries involving pain management. Like now, people suffered from chronic pain and could not find any traditional relief.
After having a few successful cases in mellowing patients in the insane asylums, doctors started looking at lobotomies as a form of pain management. Doctors found that the pre-frontal lobotomy did not actually diminish the pain. Instead, “the pain seemed to remain acute but the patients ceased to be distressed, [and] no longer asked for relief by morphia or other narcotics.” In other words, patients who received the lobotomy know longer cares that they were feeling pain.
Crime Control Failure
Could lobotomies cure crime? Many doctors seemed to think that brain surgery could alter a person’s “psychopathic personality” and decided to test out the theory Mr. Wright in 1947.
Wright had a compulsion to steal things and had spent nearly half his life in and out of jail for theft. When the police visited his home, they discovered that the man was a hoarder and had been stealing things he had absolutely no use for. He was a non-violent prisoner and volunteered for the lobotomy to see if it would change him.
Wright survive the operation and the next time he was seen in court he had a completely different demeanor. He was described as sociable and relaxed.
The judge for his case saw the difference, but admitted that he did not have faith that a lobotomy could cure criminal activities. He also felt that if he would let Wright off for his crimes, other prisoners would get a lobotomy and the jails would be emptied in no time.
Write served two more years in jail and when he was finally free, he seemed to be finally putting his life together. In secret, however, he went right back to stealing. He was arrested and placed in jail once more where he eventually committed suicide.
Cure For Communism
What will they think of next? There was a huge lobotomy craze in the mid 1900s and doctors thought that cutting out pieces of the brain and severing connections within it could cure anything, even political beliefs.
In 1948, a brain specialist publicly claimed that he could “cure Communism by surgery.” He had recently performed a lobotomy on a Swedish Communist in Stockholm and turned him into a Conservative. It was reported that the patient used to worry about the state of the world, but “[a]fter the operation, he viewed things in a happier light. He could not even get upset about the atomic bomb.”
Wrote Bad Checks
Hinkley had a habit of writing bad checks and it landed him in jail. He admitted that he could not make himself stop writing the checks and agreed to undergo a lobotomy to see if he could change. He said, “I’m willing to be a guinea pig. I’m better off dead than going on this way.”
He received the lobotomy and spent time in Kansas recovering from the operation. Then he had to attend a course on “moral retraining.”
It did not work. Hinkley escaped from the hospital and fled to Massachusetts, leaving a trail of bad checks along the way. He was captured and sent to prison.
