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More lobotomies were performed on women than on men: a 1951 study found that nearly 60% of American lobotomy patients were women, and limited data shows that 74% of lobotomies in Ontario from 1948 to 1952 were performed on female patients. [6] [7] [8] From the 1950s onward, lobotomy began to be abandoned, [9] first in the Soviet Union [10] and ...
In 1949, 5,074 lobotomies were carried out in the United States and by 1951, 18,608 people had undergone the controversial procedure in that country. [63] One of the most famous people to have a lobotomy was the sister of John F. Kennedy , Rosemary Kennedy , who was rendered profoundly intellectually disabled as a result of the surgery.
Watts and Freeman wrote two books on lobotomies: Psychosurgery, Intelligence, Emotion and Social Behavior Following Prefrontal Lobotomy for Medical Disorders in 1942, and Psychosurgery in the Treatment of Mental Disorders and Intractable Pain in 1950. He is also known for carrying out the lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy under the supervision of ...
Psychosurgery nevertheless went into rapid decline in the 1950s, due to the introduction of new drugs and a growing awareness of the long-term damage caused by the operations, [10] as well as doubts about its efficacy. [1] By the 1970s, the standard or transorbital lobotomy had been replaced with other forms of psychosurgical operations.
In Britain in the mid-1950s, about three-quarters of psychosurgical operations were standard pre-frontal leucotomies. By the end of the decade, some 500 operations were carried out every year. The standard operation was on its way out, but still accounted for about one-fifth of operations. [15]
Walter Jackson Freeman II (November 14, 1895 – May 31, 1972) was an American physician who specialized in lobotomy. [1] Wanting to simplify lobotomies so that it could be carried out by psychiatrists in psychiatric hospitals, where there were often no operating rooms, surgeons, or anesthesia and limited budgets, Freeman invented a transorbital lobotomy procedure.
Originally designed to house 250 patients in solitude, the hospital held 717 patients by 1880; 1,661 in 1938; over 1,800 in 1949; at its peak, 2,600 in the 1950s in overcrowded conditions. A 1938 report by a survey committee organized by a group of North American medical organizations found that the hospital housed " epileptics , alcoholics ...
There have been numerous claims that electroconvulsive therapy and prefrontal lobotomies and similar psychiatric treatments have sometimes been performed not in the patient's best interests, but rather as punishment for misbehaviour or to otherwise make the patient easier to manage. A classic example of this is the Lake Alice, New Zealand ...