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A leukotomy refers to what is now more commonly known as a prefrontal lobotomy (Greek: leuko: white matter of brain, tomy: cutting). It consists of cutting the connections to and from, or simply destroying, the prefrontal cortex. These procedures often result in major personality changes. Leukotomies have been used in the past to "treat" a wide range of mental illnesses including schizophrenia, depression, and various anxiety disorders. They have even been used to allegedly "cure" communism, homosexuality, and even simple disruptive behavior.
For an example of the personality changes associated with damage to the frontal lobe not related to a surgical leukotomy, see the famous case of Phineas Gage.
History
In 1890, Dr. Gottlieb Burckhardt performed partial leukotomies on six schizophrenic patients of a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland. He drilled holes into their heads and extracted sections of their frontal lobes. Two of the patients died, but the others exhibited altered behavior.
The first controlled human leukotomy was performed by the Portuguese physician and neurologist António Egas Moniz in 1936. His method involved drilling holes in patients' heads and destroying the tissue connecting the frontal lobes by injecting alcohol into them. Moniz won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1949 for this work.
The procedure was popularized in the United States by Dr. Walter Freeman, who traveled the country performing "ice pick lobotomies," which involved pushing an ice pick-like instrument through the tear ducts to destroy brain matter. Freeman performed the operation on thousands of people.
In 1950 leukotomy was banned in the USSR. With the advent of Thorazine in the 1950s, leukotomy became more criticized, on charges of it being a kind of numbless torture destroying consciousness. Walter Freeman's services fell out of fashion, and he eventually lost his medical license when one of his patients died.
In 1977, the US Congress created a National Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research to investigate allegations that psychosurgery, including lobotomy techniques, was used to control minorities and restrain individual rights, and that it had unethical after-effects. It concluded that, in general, psychosurgery had positive effects. However, concerns about leukotomy steadily grew, some countries such as Germany, Japan and several US states prohibited it. Leukotomy was legally practiced in controlled and regulated US centers, and in Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Spain, India, Belgium and the Netherlands. The practice had generally ceased by the early 1970s, but some countries continued small scale operations through the late 1980s. In France, 32 lobotomies were performed between 1980 and 1986 according to a IGAS report; about 15 each year in the UK, 70 in Belgium, and about 15 for the Massachusetts General Hospital of Boston.
Lobotomies in Popular Culture
- Lobotomies, Thorazine and other things related to the mentally ill have also been referred on numerous occasions in punk and grunge rock. The first incident of such references is thought to have originated with The Ramones, when Joey was inspired to write songs by his brief stay in a New York psychiatric facility, manifested in such songs as: Teenage Lobotomy, Psycho Therapy, Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment etc.
- In the film Total Recall, lobotomies are given to people who suffer "schizoid embolisms" during their virtual reality tours.
- US Comic songwriter Tom Lehrer mentioned on his An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer album that 'the nicest gift he had received this Christmas was a gift certificate, good at any hospital, for a lobotomy'.
- In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Randle McMurphy receives a lobotomy after he explodes into a violent rage towards the head nurse. The book was based on Ken Kesey's experience in a mental hospital in Northern Oregon. A film version was also made in 1975.
- In the novel "FutureTrack 5", a future world with three distinct castes, Lobotomy is the treatment for most crimes.
- In the movie Planet of the Apes, the astronaut Landon is given a lobotomy after his ability to speak is discovered.
- In Hannibal (2001), Hannibal Lecter gives a victim (Ray Liotta) a live lobotomy, cooks the salvaged parts of the brain, and feeds them to the victim.
- In a Simpsons Halloween episode, Homer is transported to a world where Ned Flanders subdues the populace with "a nice glass of warm milk, a little nap, and a total frontal lobotomy."
- In an episode of Justice League, an authortarian version of Superman uses his heat vision to lobotomize Doomsday, the Joker, and other villains.
- In the 1958 Tennessee Williams play (and 1959 movie) Suddenly, Last Summer, which is set in 1937, Catherine (played in the movie by Elizabeth Taylor) is supposed to undergo a lobotomy to silence her, because she witnessed the violent murder of her cousin Sebastian and knows about his homosexuality.
- The iconic Iron Maiden mascot Eddie the Head was lobotomized during a live concert.
- Allen Ginsberg once stood on the steps outside the U.S. Capitol building, demanding a lobotomy until he was eventually led away.
- In the computer game World of Warcraft, there is a dagger named 'The Lobotomizer'.
- The band Sepultura has a song called "Lobotomy", from the album Morbid Visions
- In the Movie "From Hell" Annie Crook, a prostitute played by Joanna Page, received a lobotomy so that she would keep quiet about her marriage to Albert Sickert/Prince Edward Albert Victor and their child.
- In the 1984 classic "Repo Man", J.Frank Parnell refers to the inventor of the neutron bomb as having had a lobotomy, since anyone responsible for the deaths of so many must have gone mad.
- In the movie "X2", William Stryker's son Jason has had a lobotomy, in fact it was Stryker himself who did it to him
- In "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath, Esther Greenwood meets a girl in one of the mental hospitals who had a lobotomy scar on her forehead.
Notes
External links
Neurosurgery | Controversial surgeries | History of neuroscience
"Leukotomy"