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Lobotomy

This article is about the operation that severs connections within the brain. For the operation that removes a lobe of the brain, see Lobectomy.

Lobotomy
Lobotomy underway at Södersjukhuset, Stockholm, in 1949.
Other namesLeucotomy, leukotomy
Specialtypsychosurgery
ICD-9-CM01.32
MeSHD011612

A lobotomy (from Greek λοβός (lobos) 'lobe' and τομή (tomē) 'cut, slice') or leucotomy is a discredited form of neurosurgical treatment for psychiatric disorder or neurological disorder (e.g. epilepsy, depression) that involves severing connections in the brain's prefrontal cortex.[1] The surgery causes most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain, to be severed.

In the past, this treatment was used for treating psychiatric disorders as a mainstream procedure in some countries. The procedure was controversial from its initial use, in part due to a lack of recognition of the severity and chronicity of severe and enduring psychiatric illnesses, so it was said to be an inappropriate treatment.[2]

The originator of the procedure, Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz, shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine of 1949 for the "discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses",[n 1] although the awarding of the prize has been subject to controversy.[4]

The use of the procedure increased dramatically from the early 1940s and into the 1950s; by 1951, almost 20,000 lobotomies had been performed in the United States and proportionally more in the United Kingdom.[5] A large number of patients were gay men.[6] 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.[7][8][9] From the 1950s onward, lobotomy began to be abandoned,[10] first in the Soviet Union[11] and Europe.[12]

  1. ^ "Lobotomy: Definition, Procedure & History". Live Science. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
  2. ^ Raz 2009, p. 116
  3. ^ Nobelprize.org 2013.
  4. ^ Sutherland 2004
  5. ^ Levinson, Hugh (8 November 2011). "The strange and curious history of lobotomy". BBC News. BBC.
  6. ^ Kaye, Hugh (25 April 2023). "The dark history of gay men, lobotomies and Walter Jackson Freeman II". attitude. Retrieved 28 June 2023.
  7. ^ Johnson, Jenell (2014). American Lobotomy: A Rhetorical History. University of Michigan Press. pp. 50–60. ISBN 978-0472119448. Retrieved 12 August 2017.
  8. ^ El-Hai, Jack (21 December 2016). "Race and Gender in the Selection of Patients for Lobotomy". Wonders & Marvels. Retrieved 12 August 2017.
  9. ^ "Lobotomies". Western University. Archived from the original on 14 March 2016. Retrieved 12 August 2017.
  10. ^ Kalat, James W. (2007). Biological psychology (9th ed.). Belmont, California: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. p. 101. ISBN 9780495090793.
  11. ^ Zajicek, Benjamin (2017). "Banning the Soviet Lobotomy: Psychiatry, Ethics, and Professional Politics during Late Stalinism". Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 91 (1): 33–61. doi:10.1353/bhm.2017.0002. ISSN 1086-3176. PMID 28366896. S2CID 46563971.
  12. ^ Gallea, Michael (Summer 2017). "A brief reflection on the not-so-brief history of the lobotomy". BCMedical Journal. 59: 302–04. Archived from the original on 7 February 2019. Retrieved 4 February 2019.


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