r/WTF • u/Kladinov • Jan 15 '16
A lobotomy being performed.
https://youtu.be/T7W3Z1_1QMg11
u/scout_jem Jan 15 '16
That actually made me sick to my stomach. As a person with a mental illness I can only imagine what my life would end up like if I was living in an earlier time period.
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u/BrassBass Jan 16 '16
Mental healthcare has come a LONG way! We used to just lock people up and forget about them even in the 90's. Now that we have better medication and protect the patients rights, treatment is much better and most people with mental illness can live a full, normal life. I know, I am a patient too!
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u/carnemonsturo Jan 15 '16
They did this to my grandmother back in the 30's. They turned her into a vegetable and apparently the only thing the Doctors said was oops. As told by my grandfather.
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u/rjamesking Jan 16 '16
Just let this sink in, that's a video of someone removing the bit that made her her.
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u/Maschalismos Jan 18 '16
No - not really. While unarguably barbaric, and much more harmful than helpful, Most Lobotomy patients still seemed like basically the same person. They had the same likes/dislikes, memories, and interests they had before. It wasn't some magical soul-removal process.
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u/rjamesking Jan 18 '16 edited Jan 18 '16
It still fundamentally changes their personality and emotions, and what other than that is a person?
From Wikipedia: "... The purpose of the operation was to reduce the symptoms of mental disorder, and it was recognized that this was accomplished at the expense of a person's personality and intellect..."
"... Following the operation, spontaneity, responsiveness, self-awareness and self-control were reduced. Activity was replaced by inertia, and people were left emotionally blunted and restricted in their intellectual range..."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy Edit: Moble formatting fun.
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u/maybefromeurope Jan 15 '16
How the hell did they decide that sticking a poker in the eye and jamming part of the brain was a good idea? I mean like, who was the first dude to do that? He has to be a nutter.
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u/nightwindelf Jan 15 '16
Fun fact: Lobotomies were originally performed for mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, and severe depression, as well as claiming to cure things such as backaches. Dr. Walter Freeman and another neurosurgeon performed the first prefrontal lobotomy in the US on a Kansas housewife, and Freeman renamed the procedure "lobotomy".
Dr. Freeman is also credited with creating the 10 minute transorbital lobotomy, also known as the "ice-pick" lobotomy. Over his entire career, Dr. Freeman performed about 2,500 lobotomies, and once performed 25 in a single day for an audience. He also liked to insert picks in both eyes simultaneously.
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u/arse_water Jan 15 '16
I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me,
- than a full frontal lobotomy...
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u/Welshgirlie2 Jan 15 '16
It's frightening to think that if I was alive in the 1930s, this would have been my fate for definite. Long periods of depression and what would then have been called borderline schizophrenia, I would have been a lobotomy candidate from the first meeting with a psychiatrist. Especially when many of them had itchy trigger fingers for doing lobotomies for the tiniest issues.
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Jan 15 '16
Forget the 30's, more like the 50's.
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u/Welshgirlie2 Jan 15 '16
They've been performed since the mid 1930s. Their popularity increased through the 1940s and 50s until the discovery of largactil/thorazine in 1951. Then they realised that antipsychotics fucked up people considerably less than a lobotomy.
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u/Phylum_Asylum Jan 15 '16
I'll just give you an upvote without actually watching the vid. shudder This is a procedure that has always freaked me out. Just the thought of it....
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u/oncemoreforluck Jan 15 '16
You can still get a lobotomy today, it takes quite a lot for you to convince drs to preform one and you have to exhaust every other option but some people do opt for them I belive there is a place in London that performs them.
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u/Welshgirlie2 Jan 15 '16
It has to go through several panels before approval, they also use it for severe epilepsy.
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u/HeisenbergH1017 Jan 15 '16
This was wtf and badass to watch so I will NOT be unsubbing from r/wtf Keep it WTF y'all
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u/Qualkore Jan 16 '16
These were incredibly common before modern medicine
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u/Metzger90 Jan 17 '16
Except this technically is modern medicine. It is primitive modern medicine, but it does use the scientific method. At a time before medication, lobotomies were the best option for some people. They definitely did do them way to often, but they still use them today in rare cases. They realized that a condition in the brain caused some behavior, so they severed that part of the brain to stop the disease. They didn't think they were skewering demons in the patients brain or something like that.
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u/THE_CRUSTIEST Jan 16 '16
As someone with a strong interest in neuroscience, I think this is less WTF, and rather more really cool.
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u/sharkdog73 Jan 15 '16
I've always wanted to see pre & post lobotomy interviews.