Prefrontal Lobotomy Research Paper

Opening: Are you experiencing mental instability? Can you just not seem to do away with those pesky emotions? Well then an ice pick and a hammer are the perfect tools for you, sure they are not licenced medical tools, in fact, I kind of just picked them up at my local hardware store but, why spend all that extra money when these two tools will do just fine. After a heavy dose of electroconvulsive shock, your patient should be sufficiently subdued, from there all you have to do is lift the patient's eyelid up far enough, then take your ice pick and insert it right above the eyeball and all the way to the back of the eye socket, press the pointed tip up against the incredibly weak layer of bone and, with a couple taps from your hammer, you should break right through, now you simply scrape away the connections between the prefrontal cortex and, the rest of the brain, after that simply repeat with the other eye. Congratulations, you just performed a Prefrontal Lobotomy, which is a practice a little more common than most would like to admit but, it is only one of the many horrendous tortures that awaited patients who were committed to mental asylums in the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries

Body: Trans-Allegheny Hospital was one of the hospitals that were notorious for
conducting these "ice pick lobotomies", you see the "benefit" behind a lobotomy was the fact that it usually only took about 10 minutes to perform and, as surgeons were not always available just about any of the non-surgical staff could be trained to perform them. Walter Freeman, a pioneer lobotomist, found the procedure so simple and non-time consuming that he often performed them as outpatient care, right in his office. Unfortunately, much of the time the procedures were not only ineffective but, often caused the patient to grow exponentially more troubled. Trans-Allegheny Hospital redefined the meaning of the word "care" they would see to it that for patients who could not be adequately controlled were locked away in cages. Mental institutions, once known more crudely as insane asylums have left a black mark on the study of mental disorders, but absurd procedures such as "Ice-pick Lobotomies" and being locked in cages were not all that there was to fear, simply the living conditions in these hospitals were sickening, Trans-Allegheny Hospital, for instance, was built to hold 250 patients but, in the 1950's-90's its population fluctuated but, usually remained around 2,800 patients, Some hospitals report only having three custodians to clean up after over 300 incontinent patients, human waste was smeared everywhere and, some patients were even forced to sleep in their own excrement.
Byberry Mental
asylum