What barbaric acts do we perform in the name of medicine?
Psycho surgery was once used to treat people with difficult to manage mental illness. This consisted of cutting nerve fibers connecting the frontal lobes of the brain with the rest of the brain.
This operation was known as a pre-frontal lobotomy or leucotomy and served to sedate difficult patients.
The practice was originally introduced back in about 1936, or shortly thereafter, by Antonio Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist who had success with the operation when he performed it on monkeys that exhibited neurotic behaviors.
The operation certainly had the desired effect of calming patients and Moniz was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1949 for his work. The only problem was that it also removed the patients’ emotional response so that they became akin to zombies.
This practice was widely used between 1936 and 1978. Reports indicate at least 35,000 in the United States were subjected to the procedure. It was also used in the United Kingdom and probably other countries as well.
Who would have derived the most benefit from this operation? Was it the patient? I doubt so. Or was it the staff of the institutions that “cared” for the patients?
Thankfully, this practice now appears to have been terminated.
Now there are those who consider that the use of drugs achieves the same result of “anesthesia of the soul” or emotional blunting, apathy, or unconcern. [Your Drug May Be Your Problem – Peter R. Breggin, M.D. and David Cohen, Ph.D.]
Perhaps it is time that we paid more attention to “Tending the Mind Garden.”