My wife, Jennifer, and I recently watched a PBS documentary called “The Lobotomist”, which explores the background of the procedure popularization during the 1940’s through the ‘60’s of the prefrontal lobotomy. The neurologist Walter J. Freeman of Washington, DC was primarily responsible for the widespread performance of this surgery in the United States by developing the 10-minute, outpatient “ice pick lobotomy”. Quite literally, an ice pick was inserted beneath the eyelid and over the eyeball of a patient who was rendered temporarily unconscious by electroshock. When the instrument hit the thin orbital plate of the frontal bone, a few taps with a mallet would allow entrance into the intracranial cavity. The ice pick was then advanced upward, after which it was swept back and forth like a windshield wiper blade. The instrument was then extracted and the procedure was repeated on the opposite side. Approximately 30,000 of these procedures were performed before the medical establishment decided that it was ill-advised.
These procedures were designed to sever the connections of the brain with the prefrontal cortex (the anterior-most portion of the frontal lobes, not including the motor and premotor gyri, which does not cause movements when stimulated by electodes). Patients were left with varying degrees of abulia, but with no motor deficits.
I discuss issues pertaining to the practice of neuropathology -- including nervous system tumors, neuroanatomy, neurodegenerative disease, muscle and nerve disorders, ophthalmologic pathology, neuro trivia, neuropathology gossip, job listings and anything else that might be of interest to a blue-collar neuropathologist.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Neuropathology Blog is Signing Off
Neuropathology Blog has run its course. It's been a fantastic experience authoring this blog over many years. The blog has been a source...
-
Shannon Curran, MS with her dissection Shannon Curran, a graduate student in the Modern Human Anatomy Program at the University of Co...
-
Last summer I put up a post about a remarkable whole nervous system dissection that was carried out at the University of Colorado School of ...
6 comments:
Yikes!
Ill advised...Convenient verbage for those not manly enough to carry out the procedure.
To expound on my earlier comment... This procedure reminds me of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pithing
More detail here:
http://www.susqu.edu/facstaff/r/richard/Frog_skin.html
Yikes, indeed!
Interesting info on pithing. I suppose the word derives from the same origin as 'pith', which according to dictionary.com has the following definition:
"The important or essential part; essence; core; heart: the pith of the matter." This slaughtering technique destroys the essential part of the organism without killing it.
Drive-through lobotomies. Line up!
Thanks, Anonymous. I'll look into that browser issue.
Post a Comment