You're viewing a single thread.
Wasn't lobotomy almost like "fashion" treatment around that time too(1900~)? I recall reading some comment or text saying something like that, but cant remember where.
It was pretty much just a small set of "surgeons" who drove around the country performing lobotomies.
Some were almost like a sideshow, where they started grabbing out brain matter at random and calling it successful, then drive out of town.
It lasted a few years. But most medical practitioners were against it, but the medical board didn't give a final say. Which is why it was left unchecked. You can thank the disgraced Dr. Walter Jackson Freeman II for his disregard for science, medicine, and human life for popularizing lobotomy.
Electro Shock Therapy (EST) on the other hand was rampant for at least a decade or more.
Only reason I know that is because I had to research it for my family tree. At the age of 14, my Great Grandmother was treated for Depression and Anxiety with EST from 1909 to 1913, then got pregnant and lost the baby from it. She stopped the "therapy", but it left her borderline schizophrenic the rest of her life.
You can't have depression and anxiety if we torture you every time you show symptoms, am I right guys ? I mean, you either feel better or we shock you for hours and hours, likely causing other irreversible psychological problems and even deep cerebral damage as a bonus.
The scary part is that this "treatment" was acceptable for multiple mental disorders up until the 1960s.
If I remember correctly, It mostly targeted women. Hysteria was also a catch all word for when a wife or a daughter wasn't obedient enough and it was really a way to assert control over women.
ECT is still used today, actually.
I suspect that was just marketing, but yeah 🤢