Lobotomy, a surgical treatment for mental pathologies, was widely used after World War II. It is now completely abandoned in most countries of the world, including France. 

Lobotomy is a brain surgery that partially destroys the prefrontal region of the brain. The connections (nerve fibers) between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain are severed.

The lobotomy technique was developed by a Portuguese psychiatrist, E. Moniz, after learning at the Second International Congress of Neurology in 1935 that two American scientists had removed the frontal lobes of an angry chimpanzee who had become placid after this procedure. His hypothesis? The frontal lobes, necessary for social adaptation, are disturbed in people with psychiatric illnesses. By partially disconnecting these frontal lobes from the rest of the brain, the person would have a better social adaptation. 

He performed a first lobotomy in an asylum in Lisbon on November 12, 1935 on a former 63-year-old prostitute who was paranoid and suffering from melancholy. This technique earned him the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1949. 

In the United States, the first lobotomy was performed on September 14, 1936 by two American neuropsychiatrists. They developed the standard prefrontal lobotomy technique. In France, lobotomy was performed after 1945. This psychosurgery spread throughout the world after World War II. It is estimated that during the years 1945-1955 100 people around the world underwent a lobotomy. 

How is a lobotomy or leukotomy performed? 

After trepanation (making holes in the sums of the cranium for the Moniz technique), the frontal lobes are separated from the rest of the brain using a special instrument, the leucotome. 

How is a transorbital lobotomy performed?

The American Walter Freeman performed transorbital lobotomies with a metal tip or an ice pick afterwards. A metal tip or an ice pick is pushed through the orbital lobes (open eyelids) one after the other, to enter the brain. The instrument is then rotated sideways to detach the connections from the frontal lobe to the rest of the brain.  

Details that these lobotomies performed with an ice pick were done without anesthesia or with little anesthesia (local or venous but very weak) or even after an electroshock session (which led to a few minutes of unconsciousness). 

Lobotomy was performed as a psychiatric “shock” remedy before the emergence of neuroleptic drugs. Have been lobotomized schizophrenics, severely depressed with suicidal disorders, people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD), obsessive psychosis, aggression. Lobotomy has also been performed in people suffering from very severe pain resistant to treatment. Eva Perón, the wife of Argentinian leader Juan Perón, would have been lobotomized in 1952 to reduce pain due to cancer of the metastasized uterus. 

Lobotomies were performed for the purpose of treating psychiatric disorders. In fact, this technique killed 14% of the operated patients, and left many others with speech difficulties, listless, even in a vegetative state and / or disabled for the rest of their lives. JF Kennedy’s sister, Rosemary Kennedy, is a sad and famous example. Lobotomized at 23, she was then severely disabled and placed in an institution throughout her life. 

Lobotomy has been strongly criticized since the 1950s, with doctors denouncing a barbaric and irreversible practice. Russia banned it from the 1950s. 

After the immense success of the 1950s, lobotomy was abandoned almost massively after the appearance of neuroleptics (1952 in France, 1956 in the USA) and the development of electroshock, two reversible treatments, and completely disappeared in the 1980s.