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Informative Essay On Lobotomy

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Informative Essay On Lobotomy
Many procedures throughout history that dealt with the brain and how someone behaves has been created. Out of all of these procedures, lobotomy stands out the most. Lobotomy is a procedure that severs the nerve pathways in the prefrontal lobe of the brain in order to reduce signs of insanity or relieve mental illnesses.
Swiss physician Gottlieb Burkhardt was the first to show evidence of pacifying patients through manipulation of the human brain. He was influenced by Friedrich Goltz, who practiced on dogs with brain ablation. Beginning in the late 1880s, he removed parts of the brain’s cortex in six patients, of an insane asylum he oversaw, that were experiencing mental illnesses and managed them afterward in the asylum. In 1935, Carlyle Jacobsen
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But because of the treatments’ accomplishments, the procedure was extensively used on people with behavioral problems not linked to mental disorders. Thus, the procedure was used until the mid-1950s, when medications such as antipsychotics and antidepressants were introduced and proved to be more effective in treating and alleviating mental distresses in patients. Today shock therapy and psychosurgery are the mainstream forms of treating mental disorders, while lobotomies are rarely performed. These are used occasionally on patients whose symptoms resist all other forms of …show more content…
One such case is Rosemary Kennedy, John F. Kennedy’s daughter. Doctors suggested Rosemary to lobotomy to calm her often experienced mood swings and violent outbursts. However, this stole her life from her and made her reliant on others. She could not do many things on her own so she had to change her lifestyle and be cared by others. Her family should instead have rejected the suggestion and let her live her life. Lobotomy was not a trustworthy procedure then and still is not now. This is also the same for Howard Dully’s and Anita Welch’s suggestion of lobotomy. Rodney, Howard’s father, could have rejected his son’s lobotomy since his son was explained as a normal boy, but instead he was sold on the idea and allowed lobotomy to destroy his child’s

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