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These 21 Before And After Photos Of People Who Underwent Lobotomies Are Disturbing
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In 1935 Portuguese doctor Egas Moniz learned of an experiment where removing the frontal lobes of two chimpanzees resulted in reduced violent behavior, making them more compliant. The doctor decided to repeat this experiment with humans. Shortly after performing this procedure on unsuspecting patients suffering from mental illnesses, he published a paper demonstrating a method he believed to be an innovative way to treat such illnesses as schizophrenia and psychosis. Today, Moniz is remembered for discovering lobotomy, one of the most shameful and tragic procedures in medicine.
From the year 1945 to 1947, there were around 2,000 lobotomies performed. However, the numbers skyrocketed to 18,000 after Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his discovery in 1949. There were many factors why this surgery was deemed acceptable by mental institutions back in the day, mainly because there was no medication or therapy effective enough to treat people who suffered from various mental illnesses. And with electroshock therapy being already in use, this invasive operation didnx5ct shock people. However, the misinformation and active campaigning for the effectiveness of lobotomy had a significant impact too.
A physician, Walter Freeman, helped popularize this procedure in the US. With no surgical training, Freeman decided to change the operation, and instead of drilling holes in the skull, he stabbed patientsx5c brains with an icepick through the eye socket. Freeman perfected this method to the point where it only took him 12 minutes to perform it. He traveled around the country in a van called the Lobotomobile and had no problem performing it in non-sterile environments.
However, he and other doctors who performed this procedure often overlooked the gruesome side effects lobotomies caused, mainly focusing on the appearance of the patients and relieving the discomfort the illnesses had caused to their family members. This attitude is highlighted in the photographs Freeman took of his patients and used them as an argument in favor of lobotomies. Scroll below to see the disturbing images.
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Honestly with these photos you can really tell that the doctors only cared about the patients appearances in the end... they didn't bother noting down the side effects or any behavior afterwards
This breaks my heart. Imagine living in these times. When you just need support. 💔
I want to upvote every picture but it is hard. It feels wrong to up vote - but I will because they deserve to be seen simply for the horror they endured.
Well, aging has certainly changed. I would not guess her to be a year younger than 70.
In 1940, struggling economy, job anxiety. Poke your eye with an ice pick. Tah Dah!
Lobotomy, electroshocks and tying to bed. It's so hard to believe that we were so barbaric less than one hundred years ago. I know that even today the treatment of mental illness is far from perfect. Still, I am so grateful that I live today, not few decades ago.
ECT (electric shock) is still used aND has been shown to have some success with treatment-resistant depression. The differences today are that patients must consent first and they are sedated so it's not painful
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Hard to imagine the Kennedy's had one of their sisters lobotomized, kept in an institution. Nahhhh, it ain't hard to imagine.
Look how happy and healthy he looks in the second picture! Clearly lobotomies are safe and effective for everyone, and doctors would never lie to us or use experimental medicine on people even though there might be other treatments available! "Look, Ma! No restraints!"
We still had state hospitals in 1960's that warehoused people like this in very primitive ways and the care and treatment was inhuman. .
I would act cool too, just so they wouldn't do more messed up stuff to me
I envy people who get treatment, my dad has depression and the NHS expects him to say if he is OK with his treatment and what he feels he needs. He is just confused by what they offer, he just wants to be better ...
We still tie people to the beds in some instances. Leather straps with buckles, but the side that touches the wrists/ankles is made of soft materials. They are called "Gentle Reminders" now
In fact, she is probably no longer bothered by everything. Such a wonderful citizen!
Oh look! She learned how to smile! No practice needed. Just a little poke here and there, it's really no big deal at all!
"... household pet ..." Over 50 % of the victims were women with no mental disorder but improper behaviour.
That's what you get if you let men wield sharp objects. Pretty sad.
@Maria: Report John Smith. His comment to you was out of line.
He has over 4000 down votes. He's a troll.
John Smith has a very boring life. Seriously, give him no attention.
I know, guys. My point is that we can get rid of these trolls if enough people report them.
If they take a chunk of brain away - what is left. They didnt know and didnt really care
Like not keeping house?
possibly... a lot of female prostitutes, alcoholics or simply eccentric/nonconformist women were sectioned, so you might as well say that
@Naima: Also goes for being committed to Mental asylums.
man bashing idiot! your father was a man, you know?
Documented cases,,Imagine all the vagrants they ''experimented'' on,,Men and women.
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Let that be a lesson in caution for you, Maria.
What the fuck is wrong with you
Dude what the hell? What is your problem?
I just read about how Joe Kennedy, Sr. had this done to his daughter Rosemary. It was said that she was mentally slow; she wasn't as smart as her siblings. She may have had a learning disability. But the truth was she was willful and disobeyed her father. Rosemary liked a good time, Joe told her to knock it off, and she wouldn't. He was afraid she'd get "a bad reputation" that would tarnish the family's public image and future prospects. Joe went behind his wife Rose's back and had the procedure done to Rosemary. It succeeded in actually disabling her, though that wasn't the intention. She was put in an institution and hardly mentioned of again. Finally, Joe's sons could all run for public office as they grew older with no stain on the family name. Never mind Joe's bootlegging, cheating on Rose with numerous actresses, and stock market manipulation, and John's messing around with a spy while he was at college. All of THAT was fine, apparently. ::eyeroll::
Well seems that the Life took back pretty much from the patriarch Joe Sr....2 sons
Tragic family - who knows what John Junior would have achieved had he been a better pilot.
most of his family
They did what they had to back then - put them in an institution and forget about them Meanwhile - boys will be boys
Rosemary was rumored to be bipolar and she would get extremely giggly in public which was looked down apon. I read an article that said that JFK sent Jackie Kennedy (his wife before he was assassinated) to a psychiatric hospital where she underwent three round of electroshock therapy, all because she found out he was cheating and she threatened to tell the press. Sadly, that's how things were handled in the 50s
She wasn't mentally slow. Rosemary was considered too spirited by Joe. She didn't toe the line as his other kids did. AND she showed an interest in boys Joe didn't consider suitable. He alone made the decision to have Rosemary turned into a vegetable. He told his wife Rose after the operation was performed. Rosemary was then shipped off to a Jefferson WI facility where she remained until her death a few years back. Joe Sr was a womanizing, egotistical pig! He rules his household with an iron fist and favored his boys over his daughters.
Maybe that is where the Kennedy curse comes from!
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy#Lobotomy whoa
That comment about "household pet" really bothers me... it's all sorts of wrong.
Obviously this procedure is going to turm many people into "zombies". It may have helped a very few. But was "hit and miss". Turning someone from violent and agressive into a compliant and harmless household pet isnt exactly a cure.
they'd be lucky if they had family to care for them. There were many who didn't.
there could never be a more aberrated, immoral, inhumane, cruel, completely stupid way to treat mental illnesses.
Wait'll you read about good ole' Doctor Henry Cotton. Look it up, you'll have some rage-fun for a while.
This is heart-wrenching 😢
Oh yay. 20 years before chlorpromazine. Patients with serious mental illness had not any other chance. This surgery really could "help" somehow, but when it goes wrong, results were much more worse. Our frontal lobe is very complex and it is practically impossible to hit the right neural tracts.
You mean an ice pick shoved into an opaque skull cavity isn't a precision instrument? I'm happy you point out that we can't look at it through today's eyes because today there are many more options. It's all types of fucked up, but it wasn't done with evil intents, as is thought today.
Ha chlorpromazine is evil it’s not much better I was prescribed that at 12 year old I turned blue and gained 50 pound I was so doped I had to wear a sign round my neck “saying remember this can hear” ...! Mental health treatment isn’t that great these days but back in the 80s it was bad I was locked in a institution from 9 years old until 16 year old ... dopes up with various drugs even over dosed and treated horrifically .. I had ADHD .... however I am now living a nice life but my past was entirely influenced by the treatment I suffered has a child ...
Unpopular opinion here... I do think this procedure is barbaric, but that's because we look at it through todays lenses with the knowledge we now know. I don't think they used this method with malice. They did what they thought was best with the knowledge they had at the time. I work at a cancer hospital. In 20 years time we will look back at the methods we use for treating cancer today as barbaric and inhumane. To explain it as to a child, we use radiation to poison someone. We just hope that it kills the cancer, before it kills the patient. But it's what we had at the time. We didn't have many other options up until very recently. I don't think history will look to kindly on us willfully poisoning people.
I know what you mean and maybe it really helped some very ill and suffering people. Feeling nothing was probably better than being depressed, agitated or schizophrenic all your life. Still this method was used on a lot of people who simply showed inappropriate behaviour. That's what makes it even more babaric.
I have another unpopular opinion to add. I think the new transgender phenomenon taking place, the “transing the kids” movement, will go down in history as the next “lobotomy,” or the new conversion therapy, i.e., trans the gay away. This is all going to end very badly with devastating consequences including suicide, and everyone who has supported this, including parents, the medical community, the education system and the government should be held fully accountable and get the most harsh of punishments for not only condoning this mutilation of our youth, but for celebrating it.
Granted this is terrible but I have a feeling that in seventy years people will look back on our present treatments with similar horror.
I hope so, actually. It would only mean medicine would have improved. That's an optimistic point of view, if you ask me.
some mental illnesses have NO treatment whatsoever
This may be a solution for our problems today that we are experiencing with the dems, rinos, Trump derangement syndrome, anti-Americans, etc. Just when we thought that they were irredeemable!!
Chemo and radiation. If that's not barbaric, what is? Here, we're going to poison every cell in your body, then if you survive, we're going to shoot a radiation beam at your body that will undoubtedly have terrible side effects. Then, when you die after five years and one month, we're going to count you as a survivor so we can justify doing it to thousands more! Did we mention that we will need all your money and then some to pay for this torture? No offense to all of you cancer survivors. God bless you all. I just think there will be a better way when the medical profession is done with this bullshit.
Today I saw this gallery and few days ago I finished one computer game, "The Town of Light", which takes place in mental asylum in 1940. Nevermind, how many times I read and look at things which happened in these times, I am terrified and sorry. I understand - there were no real cures for mental illnesses in these times. They were doing what they could to help. Still, most of these things seems so wrong and dehumanizing. I am glad that psychiatry has developed. It is still far from perfection but at least now people with mental illness have chance for relatively normal life.
Labotomies weren't used as a cure but rather to 'calm' the patient down. In the 30's Egas Moniz 'invented' and back then patients were imprisoned in mental institutes and this was seen as a better life. Only a third of patients' symptoms improved, many ended up in a vegetative state. I am glad that today we work with people to help them cope with their mental health. My mum worked in a psych ward at a hospital and one woman heard voices. She believed it was people from beyond the grave talking to her. No one stopped her from thinking that because she was able to deal with what was happening to her.
My eldest aunt was born in the early 1940s and suffered from depression her entire life. The "treatment" in the 1950s that she received was electro-shock therapy. If she had been born earlier, like the poor souls in these photos, she likely would have been lobotomized...sad, but true.
my neighbour was "treated" with electroshock in the '80s.
Electroshock is used today as an option to help manage things like severe depression. It's nothing like back then though. They don't completely fry you anymore.
That's a relief!
Scary stuff
This is so sad ); all humans deserve dignity and happiness
There is an episode of Lore (in Prime Video) that was all about the doctor that performed the lobotomy, in case you want to learn more about it. It's so sad how these people were so desperate to feel better that ended in the hands of such a monster. The mere line of "household pet"... what was wrong with them??
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Is he truly a "monster" if he genuinely thought he could help? The outcomes and intentions may be two very different things.
A tragic period in medicine. A good documentary https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lobotomist/
Lobotomies were a game of luck - the surgeon never knew for what result was going to come of it. It was just, "here's a stick, lets poke here, cut here, and hope it doesn't kill them." Utterly barbaric - and especially some of the captions under the pictures really bothered me.
How do we know for sure that these are true before and after photos. Is it not possible for the sake of peforming/practicing Lobotomies and its success, that the B after photos could have actually been before the lobotomies were performed. The (A) photos look so more realistic of what someone post lobotomy would look like. Its been founded that documentations back in the days were doctored simply for research and funding. Humans used for experimentation as guinea pigs. Just a thought. Remember Dr Death during Hitlers regime.
I thought the very same thing. Somethings "off" about these photos.
A couple are not the same person
That remembers me of the inhuman and sadistically experiments of the Nazis
Who'da thunk that using an ice pick as a mini blender for one of the thinky parts of the brain could have negative side effects? Seems like the precision would be incredible, what with it being a totally sight-unseen operation with no real way to measure it or know exactly what you're doing at the time to the most complex organism known to mankind.
Why not use that on our very violent offenders!! Save on the cost of a jail.
Electroshock is still used today. Scary to think about tbh
It's not scary. It's been modernized a lot, and it helps a lot of people who needs more help than what conventional therapy and medication can offer.
I feel sick
I recently reread "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," which is quite an eye-opener on this subject. And let's not forget Rosemary Kennedy.
Thank f*@k this barbaric operation isn't done any more!
inhumane!
well, most look better and happier.
Nurse ratchet.
Transing kids, putting them on puberty blockers, giving them life-altering and damaging surgeries to remove healthy organs and making them life-long medical patients to keep feeding big pharma is the next generation of the “lobotomy.” If people can’t see this, than you’re just as bad as the husband that allowed his “unruly” wife to get part of her brain removed. Actually, you’re worse because you’re allowing your child to make decisions they are not capable of making, and allowing docs to remove parts of their bodies for no other reason but for a mental health issue that has nothing to do with being born in “the wrong body.” This is such propaganda, and this whole phenomena that has blown up in the west in only a few short years is EXACTLY what propaganda does to an already mentally I’ll society. We are headed down a much more dangerous path and outcome than lobotomies, folks. Time to wake up and put an end to the mutilation of our youth before it is too late.
From age of 5 until 42 I had a normal life ,then I took Ill going through repressed memories ,my brain started processing first five years of my childhood ,abused by five men from I was a baby ,given to chapel ,lived in convent ,treated bad by nuns ,made to wash floors on hands n knees ,peel potatoes ,do laundry ,put in a coffin buried alive ,found back home ,realized my mum hated me ,I witnessed my dog being violently hurt ,aunts uncles found out ,I was taken hypnotized by my father's cousin to make me forget what happened ,I realized one day my dad and sister were looking after me ,realized my sister was my mother ,deeply depressed ,then heard she was leaving home ,feeling abandoned and being left with these people,I went to stab her but her mum stepped in to protect her,she got stabbed ,I ended up in a hospital for a year ,severely Ill,electric shock treatment ,and eventually lobotomized then I went through transition period to normal ,,on recovery we had to do chores ,or no food.
Saying that a lobotomized schizophrenic would make a wonderful house pet, is really messed up.
The sad thing is that many people even nowadays would do that to their family members without hesitation. For example, I have Little to no doubt that my parents, as they are narcissistic control freaks, would lobotomize me just to rid me of my free will.
My great gramma,Babanne,was depressed all the time and had to have electroshock therapy and was an in and out asylum patience till she died. My other great gramma died when my Grandma was small.She was severely depressed.She died from mixing gin with her meds.No one knows if it was a suicide or not.Before she died,when she was pregnant with my Grandma,she had a miscarriage and lost a baby but miraculously not my Gran. My dad suffers from bipolabipolarbipolar disorder. My enfamily is riddled with mental illness.I suffer from anxiety and depression. Mental illness is not in common and we should stop skirting around it. This ha been my talkddddisorder bags didisorder
Sorry my phone went funny :) The last phrase of my comment was:"This has been my talk"
Many times this surgery was done on women to cure "hysteria". Especially after WWI and WWII after women (many mothers) suffered the loss of their sons or husbands or brothers. They didnt understand PTSD or simple grief. Especially in the wealthy families because "god forbid" their women folk should show emotion
I wonder what people will say, 100 years from now, about our present cancer treatments.
Dear BP: Lobotomies don't REMOVE the frontal lobes, they cut some of the connections. Big difference. You're cutting some of the wiring that's misfiring, not removing entire portions of the motherboard.
What the hell? This is like a mad scientist on the loose over here. I'm scared. I know it happened years ago, that doesn't make it okay or less scary.
this is terrible! I can’t beleive this isn’t talked about more
Household pet...how dehumanising can you get. These poor people were abused. The 50s were appalling in some ways.
It makes me shudder to think of the truly dreadful treatment of mental distress. A close relative was sent the Maudsley and given electric shock treatment. It was awful. He was desperately unhappy and distressed. He said that it felt like a million needles. It achieved a sort of effect by causing memory loss. The best treatment was to move house and change everything. That sort of helped but sending a person to a Victorian gloomy institution and forcing them to undergo what felt like torture was meant to cure thid dreadful illness.
Found this short video of before and after lobotomy - could be made as fake news of those times... but who knows https://youtu.be/hAPicLG0Aoc
Epilepsy was a very bad disorder to have during these times. Exorcism, lobotomy, sanitarium, or tie up in the basement? Great choices.
I agree that lobotomies, like ECT, were barbaric and wrong. But if the photos were the other way round, and said they were about drugs, people would be saying 'oh, look how drugs have made these people psychotic'. The after photos do look happier, morepeaceful. We'd have to see them moving and talking to see the real effects of an icepick to the brain.
I know some liberals that should look into something like this
I'd like to read more context of these cases; the pictures don't really tell us enough. It's interesting and sad.
Now if only we can give the president a lobotomy.
Biden's already had his.
This is disgusting, there's a special place in hell for people who have this done to others
Read the book My Lobotomy. It will make you anger and sad. And happy for the boy/man and his strength.
Not to trivialize this, but did anyone else read the doctor's notes in the voice of a 1940s newsreel?
I can't even make it through this list... I feel for all the patients suffering from their disorder, as I, myself, suffer from depression. It really sucks, and surgery can't change it...
Brought Sucker Punch instantly to mind :f
horrible to think that back then, THIS was considered progress! i hope that in 75 yrs, nothing we do now will be deemed as barbaric as this.
Once we have economically feasible lab grown meat, factory farms will probably be seen in this light in 75 years. Hell putting people in prison for having mental illnesses might be considered barbaric and we do it constantly today (serial killers, pedophiles etc).
Well, for serial killers, pedophiles etc. some treatment is definetely necessary, but they shouldn't just be locked away. There are ways to improve empathy and respect in people. Without violence.
I have two words for you: graphene hydroxide. Politicians, Pig Pharma CEOs, Big Media, etc. are all insisting on "a needle in every arm" for a disease that's eminently treatable and survivable even without treatment. But for some reason, we must ALL have this experimental "vaccine"... It's a huge lie, and the biggest scandal of our time, but we just don't understand it yet. I lost a family member to the "covid-track" hospital treatment with the poisonous Remdesivir, induced coma, and ventilation. This is also a huge scandal! The medical industry has been hugely compromised, especially by Pig Pharma and compromised regulatory agencies like FDA and CDC, all under the direction of one man who is THE Dr. Mengele of our time.
Ugh, and people wonder why I'm afraid of doctors. If I ever get this bad just shoot me to put me out of my misery instead of letting doctors "help" me by torturing me.
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TJler: Read the intro. It isn't that hard.
That's something different.
TJ needs a lobotomy as well as an anal probe.
"... household pet ..." Over 50 % of the victims were women with no mental disorder but improper behaviour.
That's what you get if you let men wield sharp objects. Pretty sad.
@Maria: Report John Smith. His comment to you was out of line.
He has over 4000 down votes. He's a troll.
John Smith has a very boring life. Seriously, give him no attention.
I know, guys. My point is that we can get rid of these trolls if enough people report them.
If they take a chunk of brain away - what is left. They didnt know and didnt really care
Like not keeping house?
possibly... a lot of female prostitutes, alcoholics or simply eccentric/nonconformist women were sectioned, so you might as well say that
@Naima: Also goes for being committed to Mental asylums.
man bashing idiot! your father was a man, you know?
Documented cases,,Imagine all the vagrants they ''experimented'' on,,Men and women.
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Let that be a lesson in caution for you, Maria.
What the fuck is wrong with you
Dude what the hell? What is your problem?
I just read about how Joe Kennedy, Sr. had this done to his daughter Rosemary. It was said that she was mentally slow; she wasn't as smart as her siblings. She may have had a learning disability. But the truth was she was willful and disobeyed her father. Rosemary liked a good time, Joe told her to knock it off, and she wouldn't. He was afraid she'd get "a bad reputation" that would tarnish the family's public image and future prospects. Joe went behind his wife Rose's back and had the procedure done to Rosemary. It succeeded in actually disabling her, though that wasn't the intention. She was put in an institution and hardly mentioned of again. Finally, Joe's sons could all run for public office as they grew older with no stain on the family name. Never mind Joe's bootlegging, cheating on Rose with numerous actresses, and stock market manipulation, and John's messing around with a spy while he was at college. All of THAT was fine, apparently. ::eyeroll::
Well seems that the Life took back pretty much from the patriarch Joe Sr....2 sons
Tragic family - who knows what John Junior would have achieved had he been a better pilot.
most of his family
They did what they had to back then - put them in an institution and forget about them Meanwhile - boys will be boys
Rosemary was rumored to be bipolar and she would get extremely giggly in public which was looked down apon. I read an article that said that JFK sent Jackie Kennedy (his wife before he was assassinated) to a psychiatric hospital where she underwent three round of electroshock therapy, all because she found out he was cheating and she threatened to tell the press. Sadly, that's how things were handled in the 50s
She wasn't mentally slow. Rosemary was considered too spirited by Joe. She didn't toe the line as his other kids did. AND she showed an interest in boys Joe didn't consider suitable. He alone made the decision to have Rosemary turned into a vegetable. He told his wife Rose after the operation was performed. Rosemary was then shipped off to a Jefferson WI facility where she remained until her death a few years back. Joe Sr was a womanizing, egotistical pig! He rules his household with an iron fist and favored his boys over his daughters.
Maybe that is where the Kennedy curse comes from!
This comment has been deleted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy#Lobotomy whoa
That comment about "household pet" really bothers me... it's all sorts of wrong.
Obviously this procedure is going to turm many people into "zombies". It may have helped a very few. But was "hit and miss". Turning someone from violent and agressive into a compliant and harmless household pet isnt exactly a cure.
they'd be lucky if they had family to care for them. There were many who didn't.
there could never be a more aberrated, immoral, inhumane, cruel, completely stupid way to treat mental illnesses.
Wait'll you read about good ole' Doctor Henry Cotton. Look it up, you'll have some rage-fun for a while.
This is heart-wrenching 😢
Oh yay. 20 years before chlorpromazine. Patients with serious mental illness had not any other chance. This surgery really could "help" somehow, but when it goes wrong, results were much more worse. Our frontal lobe is very complex and it is practically impossible to hit the right neural tracts.
You mean an ice pick shoved into an opaque skull cavity isn't a precision instrument? I'm happy you point out that we can't look at it through today's eyes because today there are many more options. It's all types of fucked up, but it wasn't done with evil intents, as is thought today.
Ha chlorpromazine is evil it’s not much better I was prescribed that at 12 year old I turned blue and gained 50 pound I was so doped I had to wear a sign round my neck “saying remember this can hear” ...! Mental health treatment isn’t that great these days but back in the 80s it was bad I was locked in a institution from 9 years old until 16 year old ... dopes up with various drugs even over dosed and treated horrifically .. I had ADHD .... however I am now living a nice life but my past was entirely influenced by the treatment I suffered has a child ...
Unpopular opinion here... I do think this procedure is barbaric, but that's because we look at it through todays lenses with the knowledge we now know. I don't think they used this method with malice. They did what they thought was best with the knowledge they had at the time. I work at a cancer hospital. In 20 years time we will look back at the methods we use for treating cancer today as barbaric and inhumane. To explain it as to a child, we use radiation to poison someone. We just hope that it kills the cancer, before it kills the patient. But it's what we had at the time. We didn't have many other options up until very recently. I don't think history will look to kindly on us willfully poisoning people.
I know what you mean and maybe it really helped some very ill and suffering people. Feeling nothing was probably better than being depressed, agitated or schizophrenic all your life. Still this method was used on a lot of people who simply showed inappropriate behaviour. That's what makes it even more babaric.
I have another unpopular opinion to add. I think the new transgender phenomenon taking place, the “transing the kids” movement, will go down in history as the next “lobotomy,” or the new conversion therapy, i.e., trans the gay away. This is all going to end very badly with devastating consequences including suicide, and everyone who has supported this, including parents, the medical community, the education system and the government should be held fully accountable and get the most harsh of punishments for not only condoning this mutilation of our youth, but for celebrating it.
Granted this is terrible but I have a feeling that in seventy years people will look back on our present treatments with similar horror.
I hope so, actually. It would only mean medicine would have improved. That's an optimistic point of view, if you ask me.
some mental illnesses have NO treatment whatsoever
This may be a solution for our problems today that we are experiencing with the dems, rinos, Trump derangement syndrome, anti-Americans, etc. Just when we thought that they were irredeemable!!
Chemo and radiation. If that's not barbaric, what is? Here, we're going to poison every cell in your body, then if you survive, we're going to shoot a radiation beam at your body that will undoubtedly have terrible side effects. Then, when you die after five years and one month, we're going to count you as a survivor so we can justify doing it to thousands more! Did we mention that we will need all your money and then some to pay for this torture? No offense to all of you cancer survivors. God bless you all. I just think there will be a better way when the medical profession is done with this bullshit.
Today I saw this gallery and few days ago I finished one computer game, "The Town of Light", which takes place in mental asylum in 1940. Nevermind, how many times I read and look at things which happened in these times, I am terrified and sorry. I understand - there were no real cures for mental illnesses in these times. They were doing what they could to help. Still, most of these things seems so wrong and dehumanizing. I am glad that psychiatry has developed. It is still far from perfection but at least now people with mental illness have chance for relatively normal life.
Labotomies weren't used as a cure but rather to 'calm' the patient down. In the 30's Egas Moniz 'invented' and back then patients were imprisoned in mental institutes and this was seen as a better life. Only a third of patients' symptoms improved, many ended up in a vegetative state. I am glad that today we work with people to help them cope with their mental health. My mum worked in a psych ward at a hospital and one woman heard voices. She believed it was people from beyond the grave talking to her. No one stopped her from thinking that because she was able to deal with what was happening to her.
My eldest aunt was born in the early 1940s and suffered from depression her entire life. The "treatment" in the 1950s that she received was electro-shock therapy. If she had been born earlier, like the poor souls in these photos, she likely would have been lobotomized...sad, but true.
my neighbour was "treated" with electroshock in the '80s.
Electroshock is used today as an option to help manage things like severe depression. It's nothing like back then though. They don't completely fry you anymore.
That's a relief!
Scary stuff
This is so sad ); all humans deserve dignity and happiness
There is an episode of Lore (in Prime Video) that was all about the doctor that performed the lobotomy, in case you want to learn more about it. It's so sad how these people were so desperate to feel better that ended in the hands of such a monster. The mere line of "household pet"... what was wrong with them??
This comment is hidden. Click here to view.
Is he truly a "monster" if he genuinely thought he could help? The outcomes and intentions may be two very different things.
A tragic period in medicine. A good documentary https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lobotomist/
Lobotomies were a game of luck - the surgeon never knew for what result was going to come of it. It was just, "here's a stick, lets poke here, cut here, and hope it doesn't kill them." Utterly barbaric - and especially some of the captions under the pictures really bothered me.
How do we know for sure that these are true before and after photos. Is it not possible for the sake of peforming/practicing Lobotomies and its success, that the B after photos could have actually been before the lobotomies were performed. The (A) photos look so more realistic of what someone post lobotomy would look like. Its been founded that documentations back in the days were doctored simply for research and funding. Humans used for experimentation as guinea pigs. Just a thought. Remember Dr Death during Hitlers regime.
I thought the very same thing. Somethings "off" about these photos.
A couple are not the same person
That remembers me of the inhuman and sadistically experiments of the Nazis
Who'da thunk that using an ice pick as a mini blender for one of the thinky parts of the brain could have negative side effects? Seems like the precision would be incredible, what with it being a totally sight-unseen operation with no real way to measure it or know exactly what you're doing at the time to the most complex organism known to mankind.
Why not use that on our very violent offenders!! Save on the cost of a jail.
Electroshock is still used today. Scary to think about tbh
It's not scary. It's been modernized a lot, and it helps a lot of people who needs more help than what conventional therapy and medication can offer.
I feel sick
I recently reread "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," which is quite an eye-opener on this subject. And let's not forget Rosemary Kennedy.
Thank f*@k this barbaric operation isn't done any more!
inhumane!
well, most look better and happier.
Nurse ratchet.
Transing kids, putting them on puberty blockers, giving them life-altering and damaging surgeries to remove healthy organs and making them life-long medical patients to keep feeding big pharma is the next generation of the “lobotomy.” If people can’t see this, than you’re just as bad as the husband that allowed his “unruly” wife to get part of her brain removed. Actually, you’re worse because you’re allowing your child to make decisions they are not capable of making, and allowing docs to remove parts of their bodies for no other reason but for a mental health issue that has nothing to do with being born in “the wrong body.” This is such propaganda, and this whole phenomena that has blown up in the west in only a few short years is EXACTLY what propaganda does to an already mentally I’ll society. We are headed down a much more dangerous path and outcome than lobotomies, folks. Time to wake up and put an end to the mutilation of our youth before it is too late.
From age of 5 until 42 I had a normal life ,then I took Ill going through repressed memories ,my brain started processing first five years of my childhood ,abused by five men from I was a baby ,given to chapel ,lived in convent ,treated bad by nuns ,made to wash floors on hands n knees ,peel potatoes ,do laundry ,put in a coffin buried alive ,found back home ,realized my mum hated me ,I witnessed my dog being violently hurt ,aunts uncles found out ,I was taken hypnotized by my father's cousin to make me forget what happened ,I realized one day my dad and sister were looking after me ,realized my sister was my mother ,deeply depressed ,then heard she was leaving home ,feeling abandoned and being left with these people,I went to stab her but her mum stepped in to protect her,she got stabbed ,I ended up in a hospital for a year ,severely Ill,electric shock treatment ,and eventually lobotomized then I went through transition period to normal ,,on recovery we had to do chores ,or no food.
Saying that a lobotomized schizophrenic would make a wonderful house pet, is really messed up.
The sad thing is that many people even nowadays would do that to their family members without hesitation. For example, I have Little to no doubt that my parents, as they are narcissistic control freaks, would lobotomize me just to rid me of my free will.
My great gramma,Babanne,was depressed all the time and had to have electroshock therapy and was an in and out asylum patience till she died. My other great gramma died when my Grandma was small.She was severely depressed.She died from mixing gin with her meds.No one knows if it was a suicide or not.Before she died,when she was pregnant with my Grandma,she had a miscarriage and lost a baby but miraculously not my Gran. My dad suffers from bipolabipolarbipolar disorder. My enfamily is riddled with mental illness.I suffer from anxiety and depression. Mental illness is not in common and we should stop skirting around it. This ha been my talkddddisorder bags didisorder
Sorry my phone went funny :) The last phrase of my comment was:"This has been my talk"
Many times this surgery was done on women to cure "hysteria". Especially after WWI and WWII after women (many mothers) suffered the loss of their sons or husbands or brothers. They didnt understand PTSD or simple grief. Especially in the wealthy families because "god forbid" their women folk should show emotion
I wonder what people will say, 100 years from now, about our present cancer treatments.
Dear BP: Lobotomies don't REMOVE the frontal lobes, they cut some of the connections. Big difference. You're cutting some of the wiring that's misfiring, not removing entire portions of the motherboard.
What the hell? This is like a mad scientist on the loose over here. I'm scared. I know it happened years ago, that doesn't make it okay or less scary.
this is terrible! I can’t beleive this isn’t talked about more
Household pet...how dehumanising can you get. These poor people were abused. The 50s were appalling in some ways.
It makes me shudder to think of the truly dreadful treatment of mental distress. A close relative was sent the Maudsley and given electric shock treatment. It was awful. He was desperately unhappy and distressed. He said that it felt like a million needles. It achieved a sort of effect by causing memory loss. The best treatment was to move house and change everything. That sort of helped but sending a person to a Victorian gloomy institution and forcing them to undergo what felt like torture was meant to cure thid dreadful illness.
Found this short video of before and after lobotomy - could be made as fake news of those times... but who knows https://youtu.be/hAPicLG0Aoc
Epilepsy was a very bad disorder to have during these times. Exorcism, lobotomy, sanitarium, or tie up in the basement? Great choices.
I agree that lobotomies, like ECT, were barbaric and wrong. But if the photos were the other way round, and said they were about drugs, people would be saying 'oh, look how drugs have made these people psychotic'. The after photos do look happier, morepeaceful. We'd have to see them moving and talking to see the real effects of an icepick to the brain.
I know some liberals that should look into something like this
I'd like to read more context of these cases; the pictures don't really tell us enough. It's interesting and sad.
Now if only we can give the president a lobotomy.
Biden's already had his.
This is disgusting, there's a special place in hell for people who have this done to others
Read the book My Lobotomy. It will make you anger and sad. And happy for the boy/man and his strength.
Not to trivialize this, but did anyone else read the doctor's notes in the voice of a 1940s newsreel?