Portuguese neurologist Antonia Moniz performed the first lobotomy in 1935, drilling holes into a patient's skull, pouring alcohol into the frontal cortex to sever the nerves, before coring sections of the brain with hollow needles.
This procedure, which he called a "leucotomy", was supposed to cure a variety of mental health issues, particularly depression and schizophrenia, for patients who were believed to be beyond help.
Today, we know that his method was barbaric and the fact that he wasn't a doctor should have sent shudders down the spines of anybody in contact with him.
Yet, in 1949, Moniz received a Nobel Prize for his work. There have been widespread calls for his prize to be revoked but nothing has been done about it yet.
US neuropsychiatrist Walter Freeman was intrigued with Moniz's work and decided to experiment for himself. Freeman believed that mental illness was caused by overactive emotions, and if the brain was cut up, he'd be effectively cutting away those emotions.
After practising for a few weeks on cadavers, Freeman performed the first frontal lobotomy in the US, on 63-year-old Alice Hood Hammatt, a housewife from Kansas who was believed to be suffering from anxiety and depression.
This so-called success led Freeman to come up with a new plan. He wanted to devise a lobotomy that was faster and less messy than drilling holes into a person's skull. So he went back to experimenting on cadavers, searching for an easy way to access the brain. He used a tool he'd found in his kitchen — an ice pick.
Freeman realised he could easily reach the brain by using the icepick, which was into the brain through the eye sockets; he named this radically invasive form of brain surgery a "transorbital lobotomy" but it became more commonly known as the "icepick lobotomy".
This procedure, which he called a "leucotomy", was supposed to cure a variety of mental health issues, particularly depression and schizophrenia, for patients who were believed to be beyond help.
Today, we know that his method was barbaric and the fact that he wasn't a doctor should have sent shudders down the spines of anybody in contact with him.
Yet, in 1949, Moniz received a Nobel Prize for his work. There have been widespread calls for his prize to be revoked but nothing has been done about it yet.
US neuropsychiatrist Walter Freeman was intrigued with Moniz's work and decided to experiment for himself. Freeman believed that mental illness was caused by overactive emotions, and if the brain was cut up, he'd be effectively cutting away those emotions.
After practising for a few weeks on cadavers, Freeman performed the first frontal lobotomy in the US, on 63-year-old Alice Hood Hammatt, a housewife from Kansas who was believed to be suffering from anxiety and depression.
This so-called success led Freeman to come up with a new plan. He wanted to devise a lobotomy that was faster and less messy than drilling holes into a person's skull. So he went back to experimenting on cadavers, searching for an easy way to access the brain. He used a tool he'd found in his kitchen — an ice pick.
Freeman realised he could easily reach the brain by using the icepick, which was into the brain through the eye sockets; he named this radically invasive form of brain surgery a "transorbital lobotomy" but it became more commonly known as the "icepick lobotomy".
