Psychosurgery: brain surgery, such as lobotomy, used to treat mental disorder, Psychosurgery has been around since the 1880’s, first performed by a Portuguese neurologist known as Egas Moniz. Egas Moniz was one of the first people to perform lobotomy (a surgical procedure involving incision into the prefrontal lobe of the brain). Walter Freeman was also another scientist who performed thousands of lobotomy’s during the 1950’s and 60’s. During this time period lobotomy’s were used mostly on the mentally ill in order to get these individuals out of the system and back on their feet. Lobotomies were done by sticking an ice pick in the eye socket and with a mallet hammering the pick until it got far enough to wiggle around and mess up fibers in the brain. Thousands of individuals had lobotomies performed on prisoners and the mentally ill during the 50’s and 60’s many of these individuals were left in a childlike state, or withdrawn.
Many people who had lobotomies performed were never the same again; they would turn into a completely different individual. In the 1970’s the National Committee for the protection of Human Subjects began to investigate if lobotomies and other psychosurgery procedures truly worked. After an investigation was done it was found that this form of surgery was used to control individuals and restrain individual rights, and the procedure couldn’t possibly be positive. Concerns about lobotomy steadily grew, a psychiatrist known as Vastly Gilyarovsky saw that this type of procedure definitely couldn’t be beneficial to the patient. He stated "It is assumed that the transaction of white substance of the frontal lobes impairs their connection with the thalamus and eliminates the possibility to receive from ...
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...tion to try and help alter or “delete” a person’s thinking or if they have specific problems in their brain can definitely be beneficial in the near future. I believe things such as Gamma Knife or Cyber Knife can definitely be a better way to help people with brain disorders such as OCD or depression, it can even potentially help people with brain disorders such as schizophrenia. Procedures like these are not very developed since neurosurgery is fairly new to society. I believe that scientists and doctors should start to put more research into these kinds of procedures, because it can help with not only brain disorders but it could potentially help with deleting or help decrease the size of the tumors. It is also a benefit to society because it is only a one day procedure and doesn’t have the same side effects as chemotherapy or other radiation procedures have.
“How Lobotomies Work.” HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks.com, 27 Oct. 2008. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.
The first stage of treatment for glioblastoma is surgery. After surgery, an average GBM tumor is generally reduced 99%. It is used to take a section for a diagnosis, to diminish some of the symptoms of a large mass pressing against the brain, to remove disease before secondary...
These methods were found to result in extreme anger, deep set depression, and were in fact making the inmates that much more likely to commit another crime (Eerie History). Doctors at the Eastern State Penitentiary countered these accusations by making absurd excuses for why the inmates went insane (Eastern State). This fact alone provides the proof that the officials of the penitentiary knew that what they were doing was wrong and therefore came up with faulty excuses to cover their mistreatment of the inmates.
Through the operation, science was given breakthrough data and opened a whole new world of possibility. “You're accomplishing in days and weeks what it takes normal people to do in half a lifetime.” While intellect isn’t everything, there’s no questioning that it sure is useful. If everyone had intelligence that skied beyond that of modern geniuses, society and general life for anyone and everyone would improve substantially. “Dr. Strauss said that someday thousands of neurosurgeons might be using his technique all over the world.” With a few tweaks in the operation and some technological improvement, the operation’s effects could move from temporary to permanent. As a result, people all over the world, no matter their original intellect level, could be given
Sabbatini, Renato M.E. “The History of Psychosurgery” June/August 1997. Brain & Mind Magazine. 14 Jun.1997. State University of Campinus, Brazil. 6 Oct. 2002
Before antipsychotic drugs, people were locked away in asylums and in some cases doctors would use a surgical procedure for cutting nerve pathways in the frontal lobes of the brain, called lobotomy. Then around the 1950’s to the 1980’s, the first generation of antipsychotics was discovered. These drugs were developed because there was a lack of facilities for mental patients and very few people to care for these people. Apparently antipsychotic drugs are more humane for civilians with mental illnesses (Sue).
The cerebrum mainly controls the person’s language ability and the left prefrontal cortex is mainly responsible for self-control and decision making (Weiten, 2014), and also personality traits and organization of emotional reactions (Prefrontal Cortex, 2015). Gage only acquired damage to these parts of his brain. Other daily functions such as movement and his basic living processes were unharmed. The damage done to his prefrontal cortex somewhat resembled a lobotomy procedure. A lobotomy is a procedure that severs the connections between the lobes of the frontal lobe of the brain (Lewis, 2013). The tampering iron practically performed a lobotomy on Gage’s frontal lobe when it diagonally pierced his left
Today’s correctional institutions, policy makers, and supreme courts still continue to ignore the studies displaying the psychological effects of prisons. For example, in recent case challenges against the eighth amendment over solitary confinement have rarely succeeded. This is due to the regulation that conditions must deprive prisoners of at least one identifiable human physical need to be declared unconstitutional. Studies have shown that depriving proper mental stimulus results in extreme mental harm, but because it’s not physical damage courts rarely recognize the extreme mental harm in conditions retaining to confinement. Many court cases related to the psychological damages were inspired by the famous Stanford Prison Experiment that
For example, the Native Americans used a therapy involving maggots. Maggots used today clean wounds of the dead flesh, which prevents tissue infections. The therapy is effortless the doctors simply place the maggots into or around the wound and let the worms to their job. “The maggots are an incredible debriding machine,” says assistant professor Kovach, “and you’ll never see a cleaner wound than one that has maggots in it.” For that reason and being a painless method, we still practice it today. Moreover, a surgery used and possibly practice before maggots by the ancient Egyptians is Transsphenoidal surgery. This surgery entails removing tumors from certain areas of the brain by working through the nose. Raj Sindwani, an otolaryngologist with Cleveland Clinic states, “The ancient Egyptians found that the access point to the brain was the nose, they used to remove the brain through the nose before mummification. We now take advantage of this technique by removing brain tumors in that area.” Obviously, they did not do this surgery for the same reason we do today, perhaps because they would not have been able to sustain a patient’s life while doing so. One more surgery experienced by millions of mothers known as C-sections or Cesarean sections originated in 350 B.C. The origin of "cesarean" is
The treatment involved passing electrical currents through the brain which would trigger a small seizure and ease the symptoms of certain mental illnesses, however the procedure was used without anesthesia and caused the patient to jerk uncontrollably, this treatment would sometimes result in fractures, memory loss, and other side effects. The treatment is still used today, although with much weaker currents and anesthesia. Another popular treatment used in the asylums was the injection of insulin into a patient to induce a coma. This treatment was thought to reset an individual’s brain and bring them back to “normal”, however, insulin coma therapy proved to be not very effective and was phased out in the 1960s. One of the most inhumane treatments for the mentally ill was the lobotomy, or the prefrontal leucotomy. This surgical procedure involved opening a hole in the head to sever nerve pathways in the prefrontal cortex. The lobotomy was performed at least 15,000 times in Britain before being phased out in the late 1950s. Another type of brain surgery discussed in the film, was one done on patient, Maggi Chapman, who underwent a surgery in which an electrode was attached to a part of her brain and then turned on to fry that part of the brain. Maggi goes on to describe how the next few years she felt like a zombie and had a difficult time going through life (BBC,
It’s a risky, yet it makes one wonder if it were available, why not go to a real doctor who knows what they’re doing. There would be more of a chance of dying or being seriously injured if done the prior alternative method. Being specialist that knows what to do would be the safest way to go; this just leads furthermore into why it should remain legal.
One of the most controversial forms of treatment is electroconvulsive therapy. Electroconvulsive therapy, or ETC, is a procedure that consists of strong electric shocks that pass through the brain to induce convulsions (Vocabulary). This was a common method solve mental illnesses in the 1940’s and 1950’s. ECT was often criticized for not working and causing permanent memory loss (Mental Health America). Another dangerous and controversial diagnosis is Lobotomy. Lobotomy is a surgical procedure that interrupts the nerves in the brain (Vocabulary). It was very popular before prescription drugs and was also a common diagnosis of mental illnesses (Vocabulary.) The side effects include, but are not limited Mto; personality changes, empathy, inhibitions, inative, and the ability to function by themselves (Live Science.com). There was over 50,000 known lobotomies performed in the U.S., most were in mental hospitals (Live Science.com). Dr. Barron Lerner, a medical historian and professor at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, told Live Science the science or thought process of lobotomy (Live Science.com). "The behaviors [doctors] were trying to fix, they thought, were set down in neurological connections. The idea was, if you could damage those connections, you could stop the bad behaviors (Live Science.com)." That’s why lobotomy
Szasz, Thomas. Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 2007. Print. Braslow, Joel T. Mental Ills and Bodily Cures: Psychiatric Treatment in the First Half of the Twentieth Century. California: University of California, 1997. Print.
The term used to describe this surgical procedure is trepanning or trephination. It has also been referred to burr holing. Trepanning is hought to be the oldest surgical procedure performed that can be validated by archaeologists. (1) It is also thought to be the first attempt to reign in unruly or deviant behaviors. Mental illness was an unknown in this era. The prevailing thought of the time was that these individuals were ruled by evil spirits. Hippocrates endorsed trepanning, writing explicit instructions in how to perform the surgery.
The first known medical procedure is called trephination. Trephination is the cutting of a hole through one's skull to relive excess pressure. This dates back to as early as the Stone Age, around 3,000 BC. Unearthed remains of successful brain operations, as well as surgical instruments, were found in France at one of Europe's noted archeological digs. The success rate was remarkable, even around 7,000 BC. Skulls have been found from about 8,000 BC with these telltale holes, most of which are exact and show growth, meaning that patients often lived for weeks, even months, afterwards . Pre-historic evidence of brain surgery was not limited to Europe. Early Incan civilization used brain surgery as an extensive practice as early as 2,000 BC. In Paracas, Peru, archeological evidence indicates that brain surgery was used frequently. Here, too, an inordinate success rate was noted as patients were restored to health. The treatment was used to treat mental illnesses they blamed on evil spirits, epilepsy, headaches, and osteomylitis, as well as head injuries. Brain surgery was also used for both spiritual and magical reasons; often, the practice was limited to kings, priests and the nobility. Surgical tools in South America were made of both bronze and carved obsidian. The Akkadians used trephination thousands of years later for the same purposes, and the practice was improved until it reached the state of today.