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Just now

By Dr Wajiha Ali

In 1935, in a Lisbon operating theater, a psychiatrist named António Egas Moniz made medical history—by drilling two holes into a human skull and injecting pure alcohol into the brain’s frontal lobes. His patient: a 63-year-old woman plagued by paralyzing anxiety, delusions, and uncontrollable vomiting. When she awoke, Moniz reported a miracle. Her symptoms had “softened.” She was calm. The first success of a procedure so widely accepted, its inventor won a Nobel Prize, only for history to later condemn it as medical barbarism.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, tens of thousands of people—depressed housewives, rebellious teens, even misunderstood children—were subjected to this crude brain surgery. Some were “calmed.” Others were left incontinent, emotionless, or worse. And yet, for decades, lobotomy was hailed as a miracle.

Quieter, more compliant – Agitated patients became docile, which doctors initially celebrated as a "cure." Reduced hallucinations or violent outbursts – Some with severe schizophrenia or mania appeared calmer. Easier to manage– Mental hospitals, overcrowded and desperate, saw lobotomies as a way to free up beds.

Many became apathetic shells, devoid of personality. Described as ‘zombies’—alive, but no longer there.

Families reported: She stopped crying, but she also stopped laughing.

Howard Dully (Lobotomized at Age 12, 1960): I was just a little boy, but they treated me like a thing. After the ice pick went in, I wasn’t angry anymore—but I wasn’t anything. For years, I felt like a ghost in my own life. I’d look in the mirror and not recognize myself. The worst part? My stepmother got what she wanted: I stopped being ‘difficult. From My Lobotomy (2007)

A Nurse’s Journal, 1952 Patient #3472, a 30-year-old schizophrenic, sang beautifully before surgery. Post-op, she sits rocking for hours. When I asked if she missed singing, she whispered, ‘I remember songs, but my mouth forgot how.

Ellen Ionesco (Lobotomized for Postpartum Depression, 1953) They told my husband I’d be ‘more manageable.’ Now I can’t hold my baby without dropping her. I cry but feel no tears. My husband says I’m ‘cured’ because I don’t argue anymore. God help me. From The Lobotomy Letters (2014)

The next time we’re promised a ‘miracle cure’ for mental illness, we must ask: At what cost to the human soul? especially when a lobotomy remind us how easily a system can value compliance over healing.