Lobotomy: The surgery that silenced humanity

They said it was for the greater good.

A small incision. An icepick between the eyes. After that, the world went silent. The body kept breathing, but the soul... the soul had been locked away in a dark room with no key. They called it a cure. They called it progress. But lobotomy was a clinical ritual of forgetting  a scientific exorcism of human subjectivity. Its scars still bleed through the dusty corners of history.

﹒𓎢𓎠𓎠𓎠﹒🩸﹒𓎠𓎠𓎠𓎡﹒

THE ORIGIN OF FORGETTING

Lobotomy, technically referred to as prefrontal leucotomy, was a neurosurgical procedure introduced in the 1930s. Its purpose: to sever the neural pathways between the frontal lobes and the thalamus, in an attempt to neutralize symptoms of mental illness. In theory, a solution. In practice, a systematic erasure of consciousness.

Created by António Egas Moniz, the technique earned him a Nobel Prize, but the true harbinger of terror was Walter Freeman, who popularized the transorbital approach in the United States. Without general anesthesia, patients were sedated with electroshocks before Freeman inserted an icepick-like instrument above the eyeball, hammering through the orbital bone. Seconds of lateral movement were enough to sever the white matter fibers of the brain.

The mind was breached. And the self, undone.

﹒𓎢𓎠𓎠𓎠﹒🩸﹒𓎠𓎠𓎠𓎡﹒

VICTIMS OF SILENCE 

Lobotomy was not selective  it was a sentence. Women deemed hysterical, men with fits of rage, restless children, LGBTQIA+ individuals deemed "deviant." Psychiatry at the time mistook difference for pathology and punished what it could not comprehend. This was not medicine  it was emotional sanitization.

Thousands of victims were reduced to apathy. Memories erased, personalities obliterated, wills ripped out like weeds. The mind, turned into barren ground.

﹒𓎢𓎠𓎠𓎠﹒🩸﹒𓎠𓎠𓎠𓎡﹒

MACHINES, HANDS AND HORRORS 

Freeman traveled in his van the lobotomobile performing public demonstrations, showcasing his grisly dexterity. In under ten minutes, a patient could go from distressed to expressionless. The time it takes to sip coffee. The time it takes to end a life.

The tools were crude initially, a kitchen icepick. No proper sterilization, no anesthesia. The scenes were grotesque: convulsing bodies under electric currents, half-lidded eyes impaled, blood trickling from the corners of consciousness.

This was not science fiction. It was real science practicing neural necromancy.

﹒𓎢𓎠𓎠𓎠﹒🩸﹒𓎠𓎠𓎠𓎡﹒

THE DECLINE OF SURGICAL EUGENICS 

With the advent of antipsychotics like chlorpromazine, lobotomy fell out of favor. The scientific community, pressured by ethics and data, began to see the horrors it had endorsed. Freeman, discredited, died without glory but his legacy still echoes.

It echoes in rushed diagnoses. In treatments that prioritize control over care. In institutions that still prefer silence to listening.

﹒𓎢𓎠𓎠𓎠﹒🩸﹒𓎠𓎠𓎠𓎡﹒

INVISIBLE SCALPELS 

Today, the tools have changed. But the incisions remain. We cut with labels, with neglect, with abandonment. We silence what we cannot handle, as if we still carry the transorbital pick in the pocket of the modern lab coat.

Lobotomy is more than a mistake of the past. It is a grim reminder: healing is not mutilation. Care is not containment. And humanity must never be carved out with steel.

True medicine listens. And honors the screams no one else dares to hear.