{"id":1175,"date":"2010-09-11T16:12:42","date_gmt":"2010-09-11T22:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asylumeclectica.com\/grim\/?p=1175"},"modified":"2010-09-11T16:12:42","modified_gmt":"2010-09-11T22:12:42","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-september-11-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=1175","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour For September 11, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Sadistic Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Walter Freeman performed 228 transorbital lobotomies during a two-week period in 1952 At Spencer State Hospital in West Virginia, through a state-sponsored lobotomy project dubbed “Operation Ice Pick” by newspapers. Frontal lobotomies were performed by inserting a two-pronged device in the orbit of the eye, and with a sharp blow, driving it into the brain. The promised result – relief or change from the person’s traumatic mental condition. One account says Freemen did nearly 800 such surgeries in WV, while hundreds of others were performed not by surgeons, but by ordinary doctors with little or no surgical training. Former employees of Spencer State Hospital claim the surgery was crudely done by a staff doctor and “a thrown-together staff of hospital workers.” Many of the 1200 Spencer patients in the 1950s were unwanted individuals and children. They were cared for by three doctors and 150 psychiatric aides. In an interview published October, 1980 in the Charleston Gazette, Dr. Thomas C. Knapp, superintendent at Spencer when the first frontal lobotomies were performed, called it “a grim time for our profession.” Dr. Freeman, known as the father of lobotomies in America, just “dropped in” to Spencer State Hospital “without prior announcement,” Knapp recalled. “He was a big name in neurology and he had all the proper papers and signatures-all I could do was watch. It was a real grisly thing.” Knapp recalled that Freeman forgot the surgical hammer he used to pound the spikes into the brain. “We finally found a wooden mallet in the kitchen and that’s what he used,” said Knapp. “I was never convinced that the operation was helpful and it appeared to me we were dealing with a sadistic bastard,” he told the reporter. The purpose of performing a lobotomy was to sever the nerve tracks from the frontal lobe of the brain, where ideas originate, and the mid-brain, the seat of the emotions.<\/p>\n

Culled from: The Hur Herald<\/a>
\nGenerously submitted by: Elizabeth<\/p>\n

I always shudder quite intensely when I read about lobotomies because, let’s face it, if I were born two decades earlier, I surely would have been a recipient. <\/p>\n

Oh, BTW – “Operation Ice Pick”. Great band name, or what?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Sadistic Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Dr. Walter Freeman performed 228 transorbital lobotomies during a two-week period in 1952 At Spencer State Hospital in West Virginia, through a state-sponsored lobotomy project dubbed “Operation Ice Pick” by newspapers. Frontal lobotomies were performed by inserting a two-pronged device in the orbit of the eye, and with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}