A Brief History of Lobotomy: The “Miracle Cure”

The history of lobotomy in the United States spans roughly three decades of widespread use, from its introduction in the mid-1930s to its sharp decline in the mid-1950s. It is a vivid example of the unreliability of experts.

Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz developed the prefrontal leucotomy in 1935, severing connections in the frontal lobes to treat severe mental illness. In 1936, American neurologist Walter Freeman and neurosurgeon James Watts adapted the technique, renaming it the prefrontal lobotomy, and performed the first such operation in the U.S. on September 14 at George Washington University Hospital on Alice Hood Hammatt, a woman with agitated depression. Their Freeman-Watts standard procedure involved drilling holes in the skull and using a leucotome to disrupt neural pathways between the frontal lobes and other brain regions. 

 

Lobotomy gained traction amid overcrowded asylums, limited effective treatments for conditions like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, and postwar pressures including care for veterans. Freeman aggressively promoted it through media as a potential “miracle” cure. 

 

Early results were mixed: some patients became calmer and more manageable, allowing discharge, but many suffered personality changes, apathy, cognitive impairment, seizures, or death. In 1945–1946, Freeman refined a faster, less invasive version—the transorbital (“ice-pick”) lobotomy—inspired by Italian work. An instrument was inserted through the eye socket to sever frontal lobe connections, often after electroconvulsive shocks for sedation; no traditional operating room was required. 

 

The first U.S. transorbital procedure occurred on January 17, 1946, on Sallie Ellen Ionesco. Watts opposed the office-based approach and eventually parted ways with Freeman. Freeman then traveled widely, performing or supervising thousands of procedures (estimates around 3,400–3,500 of his own, including some on children) and training others. Roughly 40,000 to over 50,000 lobotomies occurred in the U.S., with the peak (“lobotomy boom”) in the late 1940s to early 1950s—around 5,000 annually at the height, many in state hospitals. 

 

A high-profile case was Rosemary Kennedy’s 1941 lobotomy, which left her severely incapacitated. Joe Kennedy (JFK's dad) submitted his daughter to the procedure without even telling his wife that he was doing this. The procedure was carried out by Freeman and Watts at the George Washington University Hospital, which provided a high degree of respectability to this action. The operation, however, was a catastrophic failure. Rosemary’s mental capacity was reduced to roughly that of a two-year-old. She initially could not walk or speak intelligibly and became incontinent. She was shuttled off to an institution in Wisconsin, out of sight, out of mind. Joseph and Rose Kennedy never visited her for 20 years. Believe it or not, she lived till 2005 and died at age 86. This story was, of course, kept hush-hush for many years.

Ethical concerns regarding lobotomy grew over consent, indiscriminate use, and irreversible harm. The American Medical Association had already expressed skepticism by the early 1940s.

 

The procedure’s popularity collapsed after the 1954 introduction of chlorpromazine (Thorazine) and other antipsychotics and antidepressants, which offered safer pharmacological alternatives. Lobotomies dwindled; Freeman performed his last in 1967 on Helen Mortensen (a repeat patient), who died of hemorrhage. By then the era had effectively ended. Lobotomy is no longer practiced in the U.S. and stands as a cautionary chapter in psychiatric history, illustrating both desperate therapeutic innovation and the risks of uncritical adoption of invasive treatments.

This above story came to mind when I read Michael Shellenberger's Substack yesterday calling out some facts about "gender-affirming care" that are seldom talked about.

For years, he wrote, many of America's most influential medical organizations, along with much of the news media, Democratic leaders, hospitals, progressive advocacy groups, and celebrities, have argued that "gender-affirming care" can save lives. This care can include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries that alter a child's body. The guiding belief has been that if a child sincerely believes he or she is the opposite sex, medical treatment should help bring the body into alignment with that inner identity.

However, a newly released report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) paints a much grimmer picture, writes Shellenberg. According to the report, adults who underwent gender-related surgeries had 12-fold higher rates of suicide attempts than those who did not. It also cites a long-term Swedish study that followed patients for up to 30 years and found that those who had undergone gender reassignment surgery died by suicide at a rate 19 times greater than the general population. If these findings hold up under continued scrutiny, they raise serious questions about whether these medical interventions have delivered the long-term benefits that many advocates have claimed.

In the future, will messing with children's hormones and pushing puberty blockers be looked at the same was as lobotomy is viewed today? Let's hope so.

Experts Gone Awry: Eugenics Movement Revisited

Yesterday I shared how an expert, with major funding, built what was expected to be the first airplane. Instead, it crashed, and the New York Times declared that it would be a million years before we'd witness a manned flying machine. This was 1903, yet before the year's end the Wright Brothers made aviation history. The point being that experts don't always know what they're talking about.

Looking back on a century ago, one might be surprised at how many bad ideas were germinated by so-called experts, especially when you consider the ideas spawned by Social Darwinism. Because of its utopian belief in human perfectibility -- that is, the perfectibility of the human race -- and confidence in it experts, the movement went off the rails by embracing the eugenics movement.

I don't know your thoughts about Woodrow Wilson as a president, but the more I learn the further he falls down the ranks in my book. Woodrow Wilson was a supporter of the eugenics movement and the broader "racial science" prevalent during the Progressive Era. He viewed it as a rational, scientific approach to improving human heredity and social organization. His endorsement of eugenic principles was intertwined with his advocacy for white supremacy, and his policies on segregation.

I never knew that as Governor of New Jersey, Wilson signed a bill in 1911 that authorized the compulsory sterilization of criminals and those considered mentally disabled. It was described as "An act to authorize and provide for the sterilization of feeble-minded, epileptics, rapists, certain criminals, and other defectives". This aligned with similar measures he campaigned for in Indiana in 1907 with the end result that Indiana passed the first eugenics-based compulsory sterilization law in the world. [EdNote: The law was overturned in 1921. However, in 1927 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924, allowing for the compulsory sterilization of patients of state mental institutions. Go figure.]

How could this happen? Well, because educated "experts" persuaded the public this was good and right.

Wilson used the theories of eugenics to justify his belief in the inherent superiority of white individuals, particularly those of Nordic descent. He frequently expressed racist views and viewed Black people as inferior.

On March 9, 1919, the Legislature of North Carolina passed a similar law with the fancy title "An act to benefit the moral, mental, or physical condition of the inmates of penal and charitable institutions." The purpose of this legislation, as the name suggests, was to "improve" the condition of individuals living in state institution by allowing them to be sterilized.

Actually there were a lot of liberal ad ssocialist intellectuals who supported eugenics during the early-to-mid 20th century, including H.G. Wells and the founder of Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger, as well as Bertrand Russell. Regarding Russell, I remember hearing Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes fame going on a rant against Christianity on the radio and citing Bertand Russell, "the smartest man of the las 100 years," as proof that there was no God because Russell was an atheist. Which again proves my point: experts don't always know what they're talking about.

[EdNote: This occurred around late February 2004, right after The Passion of the Christ opened in theaters. Contemporary accounts describe Rooney delivering a “mean-spirited diatribe” against the film and Gibson, essentially arguing that a brilliant thinker like Russell (a well-known atheist and philosopher) rejected Christianity, so the movie’s religious premise was suspect or unworthy of serious regard.]

 

The scary part of this story is not what we've done in the past. Rather, how pervasive, influential and damaging they can be when pushed by so-called experts and their media mouthpieces. It takes work to stay informed. When advocates trot out their troves of experts, it does not mean they are right.

Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have bad consequences.

Second International Eugenics Conference

https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/timeline/517228a6eed5c60000000017
includes timeline

September 25-28, 1921. The Second International Eugenics Congress at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, one of three held between 1912 and 1932. Fifty-three scientific papers were presented, most by Americans, and Alexander Graham Bell served as honorary president. The conference was originally scheduled for 1915 but due to the outbreak of the First World War, was re-scheduled.

America's Hidden History: The Eugenics Movement

https://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/genetics-generation/america-s-hidden-history-the-eugenics-movement-123919444/#:~:text=The%20eugenics%20movement%20took%20root,and%20principal%20interested%20in%20breeding.&text=Movies%20and%20books%20promoting%20eugenic%20principles%20were%20popular.

The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963, when over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States. Beginning around 1930, there was a steady increase in the percentage of women sterilized, and in a few states only young women were sterilized

A 1937 Fortune magazine poll found that 2/3 of respondents supported eugenic sterilization of "mental defectives", 63% supported sterilization of criminals, and only 15% opposed both.

No one knows for certain how many compulsory sterilizations occurred between the late 1960s to 1970s, though it is estimated that at least 80,000 may have been conducted

Harry Laughlin 

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/eugenical-sterilization-united-states-1922-harry-h-laughlin 

Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (1922), by Harry H. Laughlin

A 1922 book in which author Harry H. Laughlin argues for the necessity of compulsory sterilization in the United States based on the principles of eugenics. Eugenical Sterilization in the United States is 502 pages long and has seventeen chapters. Harry Olson, the Chief Justice of Chicago's Municipal Court, introduces the book, followed by a preface written by Laughlin the book reports analysis of how states could benefit from sterilizing their mentally disabled residents, and it reprinted his model sterilization law, which he encouraged state governments to adopt. Laughlin's model sterilization law stressed the need for the sterilization of populations that Laughlin deemed inadequate for reasons ranging from physical appearance to socioeconomic status. The document influenced twentieth century legislation in the US about reproduction and compulsory sterilization. Although Laughlin suffered from epilepsy, he advocated for breeding out specific populations from the general population, including epileptics, the physically disabled, the mentally disabled, alcoholics, the blind, and the deaf. 

Related Links

Bad Ideas: The Eugenics Movement In America

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2012/01/bad-ideas-eugenics-movement.html

Shedding More Light on the History of Eugenics: Are These Ideas Still With Us Today?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/02/shedding-more-light-on-history-of.html

Eugenics, Revisited

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2010/02/eugenics-revisited.html

When the New York Times Said Manned Flight Was a Million Years Away, How Quickly It Was Proved Wrong

One of my favorite themes over the years has been the unreliability of experts. You can read a batch of examples here in my 2007 blog post "Experts don't always know what they are talking about." Most of these examples are quite amusing. Would that all proclamations were  harmless and amusing.

Da Vinci's design for a flying machine.

Nevertheless, I just learned a new one about human flight, and I think you'll find this entertaining. 

In October 1903, the New York Times published one of the most famously wrong editorials in journalistic history. Titled “Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly,” it confidently declared that a practical flying machine would require “the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years.”

No doubt many people were thinking about manned flight in those days, in part stimulated by Jules Verne's fanciful 1886 sci-fi novel Robur the Conqueror (a.k.a. The Clipper of the Clouds) which featured a massive, propeller-driven heavier-than-air machine named the Albatross. 

Four centuries earlier Leonardo Da Vinci contemplated the possibilities of manned flight, so this was not an entirely new idea. What was new were the advances in technology that had been emerging over time.

So back to our story.

At the time, the most respected scientific authority on aviation in America was Samuel Pierpont Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Langley had conducted promising experiments with unmanned, steam-powered models. Impressed, the U.S. War Department gave him roughly $50,000 — a huge sum in 1903 — plus institutional backing from the Smithsonian to build a manned “Aerodrome.”

With Langley's prestige, funding, and the full weight of America’s scientific establishment behind it, the Aerodome was launched from a houseboat on the Potomac River. It promptly plunged into the water like a “handful of mortar,” as one observer put it. 

The pilot, Charles Manly, survived thanks in part to a cork jacket. (You can see one of these at Corktown here in Duluth, I believe.)

The New York Times jumped on the fiasco just two days later with its October 9 editorial. Langley’s very public failure was proof that powered human flight was essentially impossible in any reasonable timeframe. If the best-funded, most credentialed expert in the country couldn’t do it, the editorial implied, then who could?

Langley may have been humiliated, but to his credit he didn'quit. On December 8, 1903 Langley tried again. This time the Aerodrome collapsed during launch, its wings crumpling as it tumbled back into the river. Another high-profile disaster.

Kitty Hawk, December 17, 1903

Nine days later, on December 17, 1903, if you remember your history, at a windswept beach in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, achieved what the experts had declared would take millions of years. Orville and Wilbur Wright — self-taught bicycle mechanics with no formal scientific training, no government grants, and only a few hundred dollars of their own money — flew the first powered, controlled, sustained flight of a heavier-than-air machine.

They completed four flights that day. The longest lasted 59 seconds and covered 852 feet. They built their own wind tunnel, designed a lightweight gasoline engine, and solved critical problems of control through relentless experimentation and iteration. They didn't have elite credentials or massive institutional funding. Just a "can do" persistence and practical ingenuity.

At its core, it’s a story about how elites and credentialed “experts” can mistake their own failures — or the limits of their approach — for the permanent boundaries of human possibility.

Langley had resources and prestige. The Wrights had grit and a willingness to question conventional wisdom. One approach crashed (literally). The other soared. Or sort of soared. For sure, they got off the ground and that was a start. As I write these words Artemis II is two-thirds of the way to the moon with four astronauts sharing the adventure of a lifetime. [Trivia: Did you know that Artemis, in Greek mythology, was the twin sister of Apollo?]

I'm surprised at how quickly the NYTimes rushed to declare the death of the dream (of manned flight) after the establishment’s golden boy failed, then had to watch these two nobodies from Ohio prove them wrong.

Lesson: Whenever you hear confident pronouncements from prestigious institutions that something is “impossible,” “decades away,” or “requires massive top-down funding and expertise,” remember the Wright brothers.

My main point remains: experts, even when earnest, don't always know what they are talking about. Add to this the reality that there are a lot of people with agendas who use the media to parade their "experts" in the service of those agendas. Don't be suckered. Learn to discern.

Goodness! This Brave New World Is Getting Pretty Scary -- Ice Storms, Hacking and More

So, the iced roads and freezing temps are now in day five down in Texas. For a decade we have been moving toward a greater interconnectedness of all our systems. The famed Internet of Things (IoT) was going to bring significant blessings and efficiencies to our lives. The current power outages in Texas are revealing some of the issues that will need to be hurdled if we are to enter the future with greater confidnce.

I've been worrying about practical matters with EVs for quite some time. Like, how do you recharge when the power is out? If we don't upgrade the power grid as fast as we force people into EVs, what then? We all know that ideas can be legislated faster than they can be implemented. Executive orders can be signed in a minute, with practical implementations half-baked and nowhere near ready. 

My personal big fear with EVs and automated cars has to do with tech. What happens when you have a problem? The history of the automobile includes a history of recalls. Recalls are not an isolated phenomenon. The industry is awash in them. In 2016 there were nearly 53 million recalls. I didn't even know they sold that many cars in 2016. (This was an unusual year because of the Takata airbag problem that drove the company into bankruptcy.)

The Texas power grid collapse, however, should be a wakeup call. If we are going to have an electric car future, let's make sure we have backup power grids and systems in place.  

* * * *

Another disturbing news item this month is the hacking that's been going on, and our inability to stop it. In Florida, somebody hacked the water supply of a city near Tampa and released 100-fold a chemical that is normally used to treat water, but now turned it harmful if not deadly.

A much more disturbing hack involved the breach of a number of federal agencies in 2020. There's a Wikipedia page on the cyberattack that penetrated thousands of organizations globally. The scary thing is that our government purportedly has the best cybersecurity protecting its assets, yet the cyberattacks went undetected for months.

The U.S. Senate intelligence committee is meeting next week to determine what happened and how. I mean no disrespect but how do these elected officials make decisions on these bleeding edge issues when they were essentially trained as lawyers, not IT experts. So they bring in experts, but how do they know which experts to listen to? It reminds me of Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth having to make decisions while being given contradictory counsel. 

I suppose this is not really a new phenomenon with regards to kings and presidents. This is, in part, what prompted me to write this piece titled Who Are Your Experts?  I originally addressed this to leaders on a much smaller scale, but the main point applies to all.

* * * 

And then we have the new strains of Covid with multiple experts weighing in until a single voice gets approved and the rest get cancelled. Times have changed. Are we no longer permitted to question conventional wisdom?

I grew up in the generation whose motto was Question Authority. Now that we/they are in authority, we're NOT allowed to question authority? 

Witch Hunts

In our philosophy club last month we listened to a lecture on witch hunts titled, “Let Us Burn the Witches to Save Them.” It is not a pretty piece of history, and it lasted for several hundred years. (The witch hunts, not the lecture.)

There is much more that can be said about the topic than I have either the time or inclination for here, but I wanted to draw attention to one facet of the witch hunt phenomenon. These witch hunts were a little different from lynchings which are essentially a mob action. The witch hunts involved “experts” and proceedings that had an air of legal authority based on the Pope-endorsed document Malleous Malficarum. (Protestants had their own rigorous codes as well.)

According to the book, there were three tests for determining if someone were a witch. The Tear Test (as in shedding tears, or not being able to), the Float Test and the Prick Test. The float test itself seems a no win proposition. If you float, you are a witch. You had better be able to hold your breath a long time after exhaling because you sure don't want a lot of air in your lungs if you're aiming for the bottom of the pond. Evidently, you have to sink in order to prove you are not a witch. I'm not sure how you're supposed to breathe down there. Looks like a bummer if you have osteoporosis, like many older women do.

The Prick Test involved pincers which the “experts” would use to probe for the “devil spot” where the evil entered you body. These experts would pinch you all over looking for a spot that has no feeling, a dead spot where the evil one entered through your skin. It was an ugly business.

Witch hunts today are of a different character, of course. We no longer burn them at the stake. But they still have the same effect: making people afraid to become heretics.

Titanic

Titanic. Reflecting man's immense ego, his confidence, his effort to "make a mark in time." How dark, how tragic. Cameron's movie showed the human side of the tragedy, yet faithfully re-created the event itself, in all its dark horror.

The movie had shortcomings for me. Primarily, the lead character, DiCaprio, as Jack Dawson. He was too happy-go-lucky. The actor did not, probably could not capture the the spirit of a real artist who has seen the depths and embraced the wind. Carefree spirit he was, but he did not strike me as one who had "really lived." He came across as hollow... his tone, his voice... In other words, the actor was inadequate to his task.

Nevertheless, audiences can be forgiving and in this case, in the presence of such a 'big' well told story we overlook the shortcomings, desirous to be swept away in the event. And Titanic is such an event. It's re-enactment is an event. And the audience, without risk, without shame, without cold or pain, could say, "We were there. We know what it must have been like. We were there."

Yet, we were not there. For had we been there, our lives might have been altered. As spectators it is too easy to turn the page... to continue on our course. For true and lasting change, we must perhaps experience our own personal Titanic.
Journal Note, January 31, 1998

It proved to be a stunning disaster. The RMS Titanic was a British registered four funnelled ocean liner built for transatlantic passenger and mail service between Southampton and New York. As we all know, she never completed her maiden voyage. On the night of April 14th, she struck an iceberg at approximately 11:40 PM and sank just 2 hour and 40 minutes later.

At the time she was the largest vessel on the seven seas, 882 feet 9 inches in length, and more than 46,000 tons.

On April 10th 1912 the Titanic set sail from Southampton with 2,200 passengers and crew, four days later the Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank. 1500 people died and 700 survived.

The website link below contains unbelievable amounts of detail on this historic event, telling the individual stories of every single person on this ship, the survivors and the lost... and the story of the great ship itself, so full of promise and a perpetual emblem of shattered dreams.

http://home.att.net/~wormstedt/titanic/

Experts don't always know what they are talking about

Experts perform a valuable function in our modern world. Whenever we get into an argument, whether heated or as a diversion, it isn't long before we reach for a forceful quote or two from an expert. Experts strengthen our confidence in views we've chosen to defend. Experts supposedly know what they're talking about because they've got the inside track on specialized knowledge. Experts are called upon to give us the final word in matters both obscure and self-evident.

And sometimes experts are wrong. Here are just a few of the more well known examples of prognostications that missed the mark.

In 1876 an internal memo at Western Union declared, "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."

According to Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television, man would never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.

In 1949, Popular Mechanics boldly asserted that "computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."

The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall in 1957 said, "I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."

Commenting on the microchip, an engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM said, "But what . . . is it good for?" This was in 1968.

By 1977, the chairman and founder of NEC Ken Olson expertly demonstrated his prescience by exclaiming, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

From the entertainment industry: "Who wants to hear actors talk?" said H.M. Warner of Warner Brothers in 1927.

Gary Cooper, in turning down the leading role in "Gone With the Wind" said, "I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper."

And when the Decca Recording Company rejected the Beatles in 1962, their in-house experts assured management that, "guitar music is on the way out."

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value," said Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy of the Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

For a lengthier treatment on the subject of experts, and a handful of marketing articles I have published, visit: http://www.enewman.biz/M-Xpertz.html

Bottom line: Don't believe everything you hear. Even when it comes from me. I was wrong once, too.