Lobotomy, << loh BAHT uh mee, >> is a surgical operation to cut the nerve connections between the frontal lobes and other parts of the brain. The frontal lobes are the frontmost part of the brain. From the mid-1930’s to the 1950’s, doctors in many countries used the lobotomy to treat people with severe mental illness.
Since the 1800’s, scientists had noticed that damage to the front portion of the brain was associated with decreased aggression in animals and people, and that such damage did not cause obvious problems, such as paralysis or loss of sensation. Instead, such damage most often affected the ability to plan, coordinate, and carry out complex behaviors, along with some personality characteristics.
In 1935, the neurologist António Egas Moniz and the neurosurgeon Almeida Lima, both of Portugal, developed an early kind of lobotomy called the prefrontal leucotomy. In this operation, surgeons drilled holes into the patient’s skull and inserted a hollow needle. The needle held a loop of steel wire used to cut the nerve fibers of the frontal lobes. The operation was used to treat patients with severe mood disorders, such as depression or schizophrenia. Some patients appeared to benefit from the operation. However, many patients suffered severe complications, including dramatic changes in personality.
This technique was adopted and modified by two Americans, the psychiatrist Walter Freeman and the neurosurgeon James Watts, beginning in 1936. In the 1940’s, Freeman developed a transorbital lobotomy technique using an instrument similar to an ice pick. Freeman inserted the instrument in the upper corner of the eye, breaking the thin bone of the orbit (eye socket) to enter the brain. He then cut the nerve fibers connecting the frontal lobes by moving the instrument from side to side.
Although lobotomy might relieve some symptoms of mental illness, many patients became socially withdrawn and less active, motivated, and spontaneous. Complications of the surgery included bleeding into the brain, infection, epilepsy, and death. At the time, however, psychiatric hospitals were often badly overcrowded, and few treatments for mental illness were available. As a result, physicians readily accepted lobotomy as an effective treatment, despite its high rate of complications and side effects. Thousands of people with mental illness underwent lobotomy.
In 1949, Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for developing the lobotomy operation. By the late 1950’s, physicians largely ceased performing lobotomies as scientists developed effective drugs for treating mental illness.
