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We do keep people in a semi-lobotomized state. That model is slowly changing. I went to a presentation by a medical researcher at the University of CO, who compared the current way of prescribing drugs akin to pouring motor oil on a vehicle's engine and hoping some of it goes in the right spot. That's better of course than having an ice pick sticked in your brain.
Since proper prescription and pharma-based treatment requires tremendous resources, for which there is next to no funding, it's shotgun approach or none... or icepicks.
For a time in the late 1940s/50s it was a Big Thing for a shoe store to have a fluoroscope to x-ray feet, especially children's, with the idea that it was a super-scientific way to fit shoes. (IOW, 5% factoid and 95% marketing).
So uncounted millions of kids were exposed to fairly strong and continuous x-radiation mostly so they could watch their toe bones wiggle on the screen. And, of course, get cancer.
I researched this and while I found several articles about the machine and its shoe fitting history, I came across no claims from anyone that they had gotten cancer as a consequence.
I researched this and while I found several articles about the machine and its shoe fitting history, I came across no claims from anyone that they had gotten cancer as a consequence.
Which may or may not be the case; there don't seem to be any reliable studies on the topic.
However, this madly casual use of x-rays extended to radiation treatment of benign conditions like enlarged thyroids, warts and fetal examinations, for which the evidence of thyroid cancers and leukemia is plentiful.
The shoe machines may not have been extraordinarily dangerous to the customers, but the salesmen who operated them day after day almost certainly paid a price.
Obviously, thank god they're not a thing anymore, but at the time where it were a thing do you think most of those that performed it honestly, and genuinely thought they were doing good, or do you think most were just very sadistic? I get medical care was different back then, but to me, no one with a conscious at all could have ever thought sticking an ice pick into someone's brain would in anyway be beneficial.
In 50 years doctors will look back at our medical tech today and say we were Savages for cutting into a patient for surgery and whatever other medical procedures like chemotherapy or transplants. We look back at history and we call the doctors of the past sadists and savages. I think it was a simple case of that’s all they knew and that’s how they fixed people. Sure there probably was a few whack jobs who took pleasure in torturing people.
For a time in the late 1940s/50s it was a Big Thing for a shoe store to have a fluoroscope to x-ray feet, especially children's, with the idea that it was a super-scientific way to fit shoes. (IOW, 5% factoid and 95% marketing).
So uncounted millions of kids were exposed to fairly strong and continuous x-radiation mostly so they could watch their toe bones wiggle on the screen. And, of course, get cancer.
Our village Buster Brown shoe store had one as late as the mid-1960's. I remember getting my feet x-rayed there. It was considered a fun and "fancy" way to get one's feet sized. This was on the SF Peninsula in 1965 or 1966.
Back on the topic of lobotomies, our town was also the spot where Dr. Freeman performed a lobotomy in his examining room, with an icepick-like tool, on a 12-year-old boy. The boy in question was disliked by his stepmother and she badgered Dr. Freeman to do the procedure in 1960. This was on the same little street where my pediatrician had his medical office.
Some may have been. I wager that most thought that they were actually helping the patient.
I don't think it was done willy-nilly or motivated by some sadistic impulse. This was sort of a last-ditch crapshoot for patients who were viewed as unmanageable or beyond repair by other means. Maybe think of it as a TV clicker approach where the TV has two channels -- bad and worse (depending on your perspective) and you didn't really know which one you were on (and couldn't go back).
If there was any sadism to its use, I would suspect it came later, once it was understood that its curative effects were sketchy, but that it made a damned fine way to all but murder someone without any consequences. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is an overwrought example, but it's based on real experiences and I have no doubt that many troublemakers or transgressors were 'fixed' with a lobotomy in the later era, not for any valid medical or treatment reason but simply to put them in their place or 'win' a battle of wills.
And Williams, of course, opted for "the bottle in front of me."
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