The story behind a truck named as “lobotomobile“, which he traveled throughout the territory of the United States during the first half of the 50’s, in which Walter Freeman would perform at least 3,500 lobotomies, is back several years ago when Dr. John Fulton presented their research on chimpanzees that were subject to cuts in their lobes and saw a clear change in behavior. Then in 1936 would Egas Moniz who proposed the destruction of the frontal lobes for extreme cases of abnormal behavior. This technique earned him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1949, something very criticized, then and now, just to present a case. This fact has been named as the worst granted him Nobel Prize in history:

So, with a history so obscure, the technique does not stop there, but Walter Freeman the” perfected “. Freeman was a great promoter of the psychosurgery, treatment of mental illnesses through brain surgery.

“The Lobotomist”

Walter Freeman is described often as a proud and ambitious man, he sought, among other things, be the reference in curing mental disease. Freeman became, in its “heyday” the president of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in the years 1946-1947. It was a driving force behind the trasorbital lobotomy “simplified” technique for lobotomy, as we saw in the video lines above implies section of nerve connections in the frontal lobe of the brain.

Walter Freeman would perform at least 3,500 lobotomies

trasorbital lobotomy developed by Freeman was to introduce a stylus directed upwards inside the eye socket, then I hit this with a rubber mallet to penetrate the frontal lobe and thus cutting the nerve connections. It was done in a few minutes under local anesthesia, the operation was ambulatory. is drawn from various sources at first as it’s done with an ice pick, which earned him the common name “icepick technique.”

So, “the Lobotomist” toured throughout the United States to bring the remedy to the door of the home. The scruples and measurement of the consequences a noninvasive technique took place at the height of lobotomy and lobotomobile; While even minor was held in old and minimal symptoms of depression or anxiety. It is generally thought to patients with severe mental problems such as schizophrenia or disorders that made the aggressive patient, but then abused this technique.

Lobotomobile, the musical

have documentation of procedures and observed in mental hospitals and even then is that it is a dangerous technique because of the high mortality of patients and the recoveries that not guarantee the autonomy of the same. There was (most marked in the first 6 months of opereción), loss of self-consciousness, vegetative state motor consequences facets of bulimia, loss of bowel control. Moreover, in patients with Freeman deaths of 1-2 patients were reported by 10.

It is famous case was this doctor who did the lobotomy to Rosemary Kennedy and who confined to a mental hospital for the rest of his days. The operation promised to help the then 23-years in the mild mental retardation to just leave with a mental age of 3 years. His case is counted as one of the curse of the Kennedy family.

Already in February 1967 performed a lobotomy in which one patient died during the procedure by cerebral hemorrhage at Memorial Hospital in Berkeley, which cost him his medical license, not their lobotomies he performed until his death in 1972. The development of drugs for the treatment of mental illness and the painful legacy of a lobotomized patients and their families, led lobotomy to be considered a archaic technique plus a dark chapter in psychiatry. Therefore, the following is a little on the musical lobotomobile and the doctor who popularized the lobotomy.

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