The Reasoning Behind All Those Lobotomies

During the first half of the 20th century, many psychiatric disturbances were treated by cutting into the brain. A lobotomy is the procedure of cutting the connection between the frontal cortex and the thalamus, leading to calmer behavior but also a loss of personality and agency, and often left the patient with severe impairment. We've posted the history of such surgery, and a few horror stories. But why were doctors so keen on cutting the connections in people's brains? This video from Life Noggin explains that it was more of a societal problem than concern about the individual patient. Lobotomies made psychiatric patients easier to deal with. As bad as that seems, the conditions that led to lobotomies during the surgery's heyday make us cringe in the 21st century. They couldn't execute troublesome and inconvenient people, so they just cut their brains to make them into more convenient people. Some parts of our history truly resemble dystopian science fiction horror stories.  -via Laughing Squid