Lobotomy/trepanation

It’s a two-for-one Wednesday here at “things that fascinate me” week!

I simply couldn’t choose one since both are such completely effed up procedures—which, I often joke about having either one performed on myself—but both involved drilling holes in a person’s head to “cure,” “rid” or “treat” mental illness/issues/disorders.

The lobotomy was actually a medically approved practice—considered neurosurgical/psychosurgery, called “leucotomy—considered to treat, among many mental illnesses, schizophrenia, clinical depression, various anxiety disorders and even moodiness and overall “youthful defiance.” Neurologist António Egas Moniz was even given the Nobel Prize for medicine for his lobotomy work. (Though, “Ice pick lobotomies” eventually became the rage. It involved accessing the frontal lobes via the eye sockets and drilling an ice pick in with a hammer and mallet.) Most “participants” were, more times than not, unwilling and mainly mental hospital patients.

Trepanation was done just for fun. No, in its origination—which has been traced back to the Neolithic Age—it was practiced (as word on the cave indicated) to cure epileptic seizures, migraines, and mental disorders. However, in the early 1960s, a couple of hippies—one a doctor (Bart Huges) and the other an accountant (Joseph Mellen, no pun intended—even if the spelling isn’t the same) who was a Huges disciple—willingly (you heard me, WILLINGLY) performed trepanation on themselves. For Huges it was to “return to a childlike state, which the unfettered mind remained in touch with its primal dreams, imagination and intense sensations,” while Mellen’s motive was “to get permanently high."

Lobotomy and trepanation—The pot (insane) calling the kettle (insane) black or what?