What Is Lobotomy In The 1940s

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Along with the intensified prevalence of lobotomy in the 1940s, many people begin to accept this procedure as sound and modern science in its efficiency in eliminating mental issues. Although only a few genuinely successful cases had existed, the Kennedy family heard this and arranged a prefrontal lobotomy for Rosemary Kennedy, sister of President John F. Kennedy. Rosemary suffered from seizures and violent mood swings in her early years, and she became increasingly irritable and extremely unpredictable because she was born with a brain defect. When she turned 22 years old, she experienced convulsions and rages, which she hit or injured others more often(McAfee). Her father Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. decided Rosemary ought to accept lobotomy in …show more content…

Lobotomies came into vogue in the 1940s as an advanced surgery to intervene in the lives of women suffering from schizophrenia. The ethical complications of lobotomies led to a series of reforms that aimed to discontinue lobotomies and practice more humane methods. Scientists invented technologies that have much more effective and fewer side effects than lobotomy in the later years of the 1900s. The convenient procedure of lobotomy became the best prescription for the mentally disturbed women in the 1940s, yet the controversies surrounding the ethics and side effects of this operation led to its demise as a best …show more content…

Followed to the news report in the last paragraph, the female endured years of colitis symptoms before having a lobotomy. Although brain surgery ought not to be used for treating stomach issues, doctors still deemed that operations performed efficiently since they eliminated the agony. Despite its effectiveness in moving pain, this woman couldn’t have their normal life due to her lost control of her bowels. Consider Rosemary Kennedy, whose lobotomy caused her incontinent and reduced her cognitive capacity to a 2-year-old child, thus she endured isolation for the rest of her life. For doctors in the 1940s, the icepick became the symbol and the reality of lobotomies. Otherwise, they couldn't come up with a better way for mental illness patients, but this turned into a problem of ethics since this kind of brain surgery represents brutal for people, “Since lobotomy went out of favor in the 1960s, it's become synonymous with cruelty or hubris, the work of sadists and megalomaniacs”(De Young). After decades from the 1940s, “sadists and megalomaniacs” referred that lobotomy as symbolized brutal, and it already had been eliminated from the professional operation. In the case of losing personalities or intellectual impairment, many women have to be admitted to a nursing home in order to avoid the inconvenience of physical