Review: Great and Desperate Cures!
Review: Great and Desperate Cures!: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness
Psychosurgery? What's that? Well perhaps the word 'lobotomy' might be more familiar. A treatment that we now find unutterably barbaric, this book makes it understandable why it was embraced so wholeheartedly by the medical profession - with virtually no working treatments in psychiatry, someone came along claiming an operation that was effective, easy and cheap could lead to people being de-institutionalised. Doctors weren't evil (well, probably not) - but rather swept along with the enthusiasm for it. Enthusiasm that led them to overlook the fact that it really wasn't that effective, and even if it was the side-effects were massive.
Walter Freeman especially comes across as a fascinating character - totally driven, bordering on obsessive, putting massive energy criss-crossing the USA and the world to promote lobotomy. He was still following up his patients (when he could find them), thirty years after their operations, and sent all of them Christmas cards. Most of them (or their families) sent cards back - even when the operation had basically been a failure; a mark of a more paternalistic time, or that even though Freeman had failed he had at least tried?
The book ends with a strong note of warning - that the factors that led to the adoption of lobotomy still exist in medicine; for all of our desires for evidence based medicine doctors are still human, and I suspect that while probably not as easy to do as it was back then we could still be carried away by the next big thing. Perhaps we already are, and we just don't know it yet...
I'd recommend everyone reads the story of Howard Dully, lobotomized when he was 12 by Walter Freeman:
"If you saw me you'd never know I'd had a lobotomy," Dully says. "The only thing you'd notice is that I'm very tall and weigh about 350 pounds. But I've always felt different -- wondered if something's missing from my soul. I have no memory of the operation, and never had the courage to ask my family about it."
Psychosurgery? What's that? Well perhaps the word 'lobotomy' might be more familiar. A treatment that we now find unutterably barbaric, this book makes it understandable why it was embraced so wholeheartedly by the medical profession - with virtually no working treatments in psychiatry, someone came along claiming an operation that was effective, easy and cheap could lead to people being de-institutionalised. Doctors weren't evil (well, probably not) - but rather swept along with the enthusiasm for it. Enthusiasm that led them to overlook the fact that it really wasn't that effective, and even if it was the side-effects were massive.
Walter Freeman especially comes across as a fascinating character - totally driven, bordering on obsessive, putting massive energy criss-crossing the USA and the world to promote lobotomy. He was still following up his patients (when he could find them), thirty years after their operations, and sent all of them Christmas cards. Most of them (or their families) sent cards back - even when the operation had basically been a failure; a mark of a more paternalistic time, or that even though Freeman had failed he had at least tried?
The book ends with a strong note of warning - that the factors that led to the adoption of lobotomy still exist in medicine; for all of our desires for evidence based medicine doctors are still human, and I suspect that while probably not as easy to do as it was back then we could still be carried away by the next big thing. Perhaps we already are, and we just don't know it yet...
I'd recommend everyone reads the story of Howard Dully, lobotomized when he was 12 by Walter Freeman:
"If you saw me you'd never know I'd had a lobotomy," Dully says. "The only thing you'd notice is that I'm very tall and weigh about 350 pounds. But I've always felt different -- wondered if something's missing from my soul. I have no memory of the operation, and never had the courage to ask my family about it."