Review: Great and Desperate Cures!

[ethelfleda]

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

Comments

[sunsetmog]

That sounds FASCINATING. *chinhands*

[ethelfleda]

It is in a sort of jawdropping way. Like the fact that for the 'ice pick' lobotomy he never bothered to scrub up, didn't anesthetise patients but gave them ECT until they were unconscious post-seizure, then basically rammed an ice pick up their orbit and guddled it around until he thought enough brain had been destroyed. WTF isn't in it.

[sunsetmog]

JFC. There isn't enough WTF in the WORLD.

[davidn]

This new "transorbital" lobotomy involved lifting the upper eyelid and placing the point of a thin surgical instrument under the eyelid and against the top of the eyesocket. A mallet was used to drive the leucotome through the thin layer of bone

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