Is this a good enough reason to drive a spike through a child's eye sockets and into his brain?
“He objects to going to bed, but then sleeps well. He does a good deal of daydreaming. He turns the room lights on when there's broad sunlight outside. He hates to wash. He puts on a sweater on the hottest days and goes without an undershirt on chilly ones. I think it would be pretty much of a shame to wish Howard on anybody.” – Walter J. Freeman, M.D., Ph.D., on patient Howard Dully, who at the age of 12 became one of the youngest people ever to undergo a transorbital lobotomy.
Freeman’s sordid story is told in the book by Jack El-Hai. For an account of the patient/victim’s point of view, see My Lobotomy by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. Also see the National Pubic Radio program by the same name.
The really scary part is, lobotomies did not go out of fashion until the first generation of tranquilizing drugs was introduced. Even the physicians who were screaming abuse at Freeman at professional meetings would not go to the press with their misgivings.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons
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