I finally caught up on my sister’s new blog and what a good thing to have done, as it inspired the post I’m about to write. As you may or may not know, I was in a music video once for a Boston-area band, September Twilight. We had to wear masks to filter out all the asbestos and lead paint that was floating around the condemned building, but I ended up not wearing the mask most of the time, as it was a hassle to take on and off for every take, so I opted to risk asbestos inhalation. The shoot ended with me going to the emergency room and getting 2 staples in my head. I wish I had a picture of the blood pouring out of my head, onto my shoulders and white dress, but as we were all in a state of panic when it happened, no such picture exists and all I have to offer is this, taken after I cleaned up and went to the hospital:

Anyway, what I kind of glossed over just then was the fact that we were in an abandoned insane asylum in Grafton, MA. Between takes we went off and explored the place - the shock treatment bathtubs, the incinerator in which the dead were burned (but only after they were cut in 2, as the oven wasn’t large enough to accommodate full-sized bodies), the cafeteria that was in the basement, right next to the incinerator, crumbling walls covered with satanic graffitti, etc. Shock treatment, right? Lobotomies? Drains in the middle of the floor to drain blood or whatever else from a room? Get out of here with that stuff.

Of Greek origin: Lobos=lobe of brain, Tomos=to cut/slice.
Lobotomies were used in the 20th century as a cure for certain forms of mental illness (schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, defiance, teen angst, etc.).
During a lobotomy, the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex of the brain are severed.
Dr. Gottlieb Burckhardt of Switzerland was the first to use an early form of this psychosurgery in 1890 (he removed parts of the brain). Out of the 6 patients he performed lobotomies on, 2 died but the remaining 4 exhibited altered behavior.
In 1935, a Portuguese physician aspired to achieve a similar outcome but through different means: he drilled holes in the skull near the frontal lobe and injected alcohol to destroy the tissue.
In 1949, he won the Nobel Prize for this “breakthrough” procedure!
Walter Freeman, an American neurosurgeon, was intrigued and in 1936 started performing (and perfecting) lobotomies.
He realized, however, that the way in which he was accessing the brain (through holes drilled in the skull) would be too costly to perform on those who actually needed it most (patients in mental asylums).
Going in through the eye sockets proved a less expensive but no less effective way of getting the job done (transorbital lobotomy).
To make a long operation short: an icepick-like object was inserted under the eyelid, right underneath the eye socket. It was hammered in to break a thin layer of skull and cuts were made in that part of the brain. This was done on both eyes.
As anesthesia wasn’t readily available or affordable in asylums, it was recommended that patients be rendered unconscious by electroshock.
Only after the drug Thorazine was introduced were lobotomies no longer in vogue and only then were they viewed as a “barbaric mistake,” though several countries, including the US, continued the practice in small numbers through the late 1980s.
About 40,000 lobotomies were performed in America, turning those who received them into idiots. Seriously, many who received lobotomies exhibited infantile behavior or felt that they were missing a part of their soul. Apparently, others were just fine afterwards, but I think more often than not, nothing positive came from the surgery.
A quick note on shock treatment: it is still used today for cases of severe depression or mania that don’t respond to any other forms of treatment.
1 million people worldwide consent to and undergo electroshock each year and, from what I hear, to positive results!

Joe Blog: Where Joseph Kirkland Blogs

Mental Health. A Breather, If You Will.