The Unsparing Psycho Surgery

The Trans Orbital Lobotomy

Dr. Walter Freeman, the father of the procedure that involved hammering an ice pick — like instrument into a patient’s brain directly through their eye socket, believed that this 10 — minute process will all but end the need for mental institutions. He had the best of intentions but wound up creating an entirely new kind of Horror Story.

Influenced by the pain, distress and the devastating effects of mental illness. Freeman started performing various experiments such as Oxygen Therapy and Chemical Treatments. Freeman also learned the Frontal Lobe Ablation Technique in which a specific part of the brain was targeted and a probe is placed to ablate (destroy) a brain response.

Freeman came to know about a procedure known as Leucotomy which took out a small cylindrical sample out of the patient’s brain. He modified this procedure and renamed it as Lobotomy. Freeman believed that “excess emotions” that lead to Mental Illness can be thwarted if certain nerves were “severed”. He thought this could stabilize a person’s personality.

His first Lobotomy was on a 63 year old patient suffering from insomnia and agitated depression. The procedure completely transformed her but she died after another 5 years.

Start Of The Abomination

Soon Freeman developed a more efficient way where all the fright began. The new procedure he created involved rendering a patient’s unconscious by an Electric Shock before inserting an ice pick — like instrument inside the eyeballs to reach the brain. The instrument was hammered into the patient’s brain and wiggle back and forth in order to sever the connections in the frontal lobe of the brain. Four hours later the patient would wake up without any anxiety or apprehension.

In reality, the procedure was leaving many patients in a vegetative state or reduced them to child — like behavior but Freeman didn’t care. He didn’t even consult his old patients after conducting the procedure on them. Despite the shortcomings, many hospitals adopted the procedure as it made the patients just easier to handle. This was complete cruelty. Despite the criticism, the Lobotomy gained fame and came to be known as a “miracle surgery”. Here's a picture -

Behind all of this, an estimated 490 individuals died. Freeman was so relentless that he even allowed the media to film the procedure during which he took the life of a patient and then seamlessly shifted to the other. Other than the died patients, the survivors were either crippled for life or left in a vegetative state.

The real miracle was that he had even treated John F. Kennedy’s sister whom he left incapacitated after it.

Many supporters of his' now began to abandon him and his brutal procedure but he was defiant. He lost his license to the last patient he treated who died due to severing of a blood vessel.

“ Between the Ego and the Ice pick, the Psycho Surgery and the Psycho Analysis, he chose Ego. ”