Was lobotomy one of the most controversial procedures in the history of mental health invented?By Egas Moniz in the 1930s and has since become popular around the world, thousands of lobotomies were made until the 1950s. when it started to stop being used due to its serious side effects.
Lobotomy is a surgical procedure that involves cutting off the connections of one or both lobes of the brain, thus separating the prefrontal cortex from other parts of the brain, this surgery is also known as ‘leukotomy’.
- Egas Moniz was not the first to attempt this type of procedure.
- In 1980.
- Dr.
- Gottlieb Burkhardt performed six of these surgeries.
- Two of the patients died.
- So he stopped his investigation.
- The truth is that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
- Lobotomy claimed many victims around the world.
“He knows all theories, he masters all techniques, but by touching a human soul, be just another human soul. “Carl Gustav Jung?
In 1935, Egas Moniz, neurologist and professor at the University of Lisbon, launched his own research?Around lobotomy. Quotes in word search are due to Moniz undergoing surgery of this style on a chimpanzee, noting that the animal behaved more docilely, he deduced that the procedure was applicable to humans.
This “unsustainable” procedure has been challenged for decades. The truth is that no serious study can, in one case, extrapolate the conclusions to all cases and to all patients. It is true that single-case studies are of great value to science, either on rare diseases or to open up broader areas of research, but their findings should not be widespread.
In this case, there is one condition that still limits generalization: lobotomy applies to a primate and not to a human being. Despite this, Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1949 for his “invention”.
Egas Moniz worked with another neurologist named Almeida Lima, both performed the world’s first lobotomies, the procedure was to drill two holes in the patient’s skull, then an injection of alcohol into the cortex was applied to kill this part of the brain, he and his partner. evaluated the evolution of patients following this procedure, which have logically seen developments in all cases.
Once Egas Moniz began to popularize his invention in Europe, it was emulated by various neurologists around the world. The most famous of them was Walter Freeman. This guy wasn’t really a surgeon. Despite this, he developed a technique that has come to be known as an “icebreaker lobotomy. “
This American doctor discovered that he could more easily reach various regions of the brain through his eyes. He introduced an icebreaker-like instrument through them, “Shake a little?”And that’s it. I was able to do lobotomies in just five minutes.
The degree of? Industrialization? That Freeman achieved with this procedure was so high that he began offering the service “at home”. There was a van he called “Lobotomóvil”. With it he has traveled many points in the United States performing lobotomies right and sinister, for all kinds of psychological problems, it is estimated that during these years, between 40,000 and 50,000 patients were lobotomized worldwide.
Many patients undergoing lobotomy have died; others suffered severe brain damage, which sometimes manifested itself immediately and other years later; many were in a vegetative state and others had a cognitive setback in their faculties. his symptoms.
Lobotomy was not performed to cure a mental illness, its goal was simply to calm the patient down. That is why it was applied with particular fury to those suffering from anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression at risk of suicide. Surgery has been applied to many schizophrenic patients, but these in particular have shown no improvement.
Basically, lobotomy caused a rupture with the world, so patients “calmed down. “Many saw it as a hope, because at that time, and even today and in some contexts, the mentally ill are subjected to a kind of “perpetual chain. ” Interior of asylums and psychiatric hospitals. The procedure allowed at least a large number of them to get out of prison.
Lobotomy began to disuse in the 1950s, when “torazine”, the first antipsychotic, was invented. Interestingly, its inventor called it “chemical lobotomy”. In the 1970s, the procedure was banned in most countries. which is still practiced clandestinely in many places. A group of citizens has called for the cancellation of the Nobel Prize in Medicine Egas Moniz, because they believe that their achievement has done more harm than good to humanity.