Lobotomy, was a surgical procedure in which the nerve pathways in a lobe or lobes of the brain are severed from those in other areas. The procedure formerly was used as a radical therapeutic measure to help grossly disturbed patients with schizophrenia, manic depression and mania (bipolar disorder), and other mental illnesses.
Development of the procedure:
Removing parts of the brain cortex were known from the late 1880s, however with mixed results. In 1935 however, Portuguese neurophysicians Moniz and Lima improved the operation naming it prefrontal leukotomy. The surgery consisted of drilling two holes in the patient’s head and then injecting pure ethyl alcohol into the prefrontal cortex. Alcohol was used to disrupt the neuronal tracts that were believed to give rise to and reinforce the recurrent patterns of thought observed in mentally ill patients. Again the results were mixed. Despite this, the practice was soon widely adopted, largely because there were few other therapeutic measures available at the time for quieting chronically agitated, delusional, self-destructive, or violent patients.
The prefrontal leukotomy procedure developed by Moniz and Lima was modified in 1936 by American neurologists Walter J. Freeman and James W. Watts. Freeman preferred the use of the term lobotomy and therefore renamed the procedure “prefrontal lobotomy.”
In 1945 Freeman streamlined the procedure, replacing it with transorbital lobotomy, in which a picklike instrument was forced through the back of the eye sockets to pierce the thin bone that separates the eye sockets from the frontal lobes. The pick’s point was then inserted into the frontal lobe and used to sever connections in the brain.
Reception:
The use of lobotomy in the United States was resisted and criticized heavily by American neurosurgeons. However, because Freeman managed to promote the success of the surgery through the media, lobotomy became touted as a miracle procedure, capturing the attention of the public and leading to an overwhelming demand for the operation.
The side-effects:
A large proportion of such lobotomized patients exhibited reduced tension or agitation, but many also showed other effects, such as apathy, passivity, lack of initiative, poor ability to concentrate, and a generally decreased depth and intensity of their emotional response to life. Some died as a result of the procedure.
Abandoning of the procedure:
Lobotomies were performed on a wide scale during the 1940s; Freeman himself performed or supervised more than 3,500 lobotomies by the late 1960s. The practice gradually fell out of favor beginning in the mid-1950s, when antipsychotics, antidepressants, and other medications that were much more effective in treating and alleviating the distress of mentally disturbed patients came into use.
Source: britannica.com