CNN story on Howard

Procedure once considered legitimate medical treatment

(CNN) -- Howard Dully was 12 years old when he was told he was going to the hospital for some tests.

"I remember having big black swollen eyes one day and staying in the hospital for a few days because apparently I had an infection," recalls Dully, now 56, who lives in San Jose, California.

That's all Dully can remember of the transorbital or "ice pick" lobotomy performed on him more than 40 years ago.

Many in the medical community consider lobotomies barbaric by today's standards, but there was a time when the procedure was an accepted treatment for those suffering from severe mental illness.

Throughout the 1930s, '40s and most of the '50s, the main route of treatment for most of these patients was to keep them institutionalized in often filthy, deplorable conditions until they got better on their own. Many remained for years, even decades.

Then came the lobotomy. It was first performed in 1935 in Portugal by Dr. Egas Moniz, who later would win the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for the technique.

Neurologist Walter J. Freeman quickly brought the lobotomy to the United States, first performing it in 1936. A few months later the procedure made the front page of The New York Times with the headline "Surgery Used on the Soul Sick."

link