Animated Video Explores The Dark and Shocking History of The Lobotomy

This is an animated video from Life Noggin that explores the dark, chilling, and shocking history of the lobotomy, how and why it was invented, the people who received the “treatment” and how it was performed.

This is one of those things from the past that is like a horror movie. It’s wild to think that doctors thought scrambling people’s brains with an icepick was a good idea!

“If you suffered from a mental illness in the early 1900s doctors might have treated you with something called a lobotomy. …Physicians broke the connections between the frontal lobe and the thalamus…scientists believed that severing the neural fibers between them would stop abnormal behavior.

“This was originally accomplished through open brain surgery until the 1930, when the less invasive leukotomy was developed that first involved drilling through the skull.”

Lobotomies were performed up until 1967, and doctors prescribed them for any type of mental illness, anxiety, insomnia, and other conditions.

“Yet despite their gruesome methods and terrible outcomes lobotomy were super popular in the 1930s and 40s they were performed on tens of thousands of people across the world.”

“At the time the term mental illness encompassed a wide range of behaviors including intellectual disability homosexuality and committing a crime but the group most often subjected to a lobotomy was women, even though mental hospitals contained more male patients. …And in most cases their symptoms were simply apprehension or insomnia.”

Insane and wild stuff!