{"id":181,"date":"2021-09-08T15:42:37","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T15:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/historyofmentalhealth.janisshurtleff.com\/blog\/?p=46"},"modified":"2021-09-08T15:42:37","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T15:42:37","slug":"surgery-of-the-soul-lpotl-lobotomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.mcclurken.org\/HistoryOfMentalHealth\/histmental2021\/surgery-of-the-soul-lpotl-lobotomy\/","title":{"rendered":"Surgery of the Soul: LPOTL Lobotomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lastpodcastontheleft.com\/episodes\/2020\/6\/19\/episode-414-lobotomies-part-ii-assistant-to-the-bone-slicer\">https:\/\/www.lastpodcastontheleft.com\/episodes\/2020\/6\/19\/episode-414-lobotomies-part-ii-assistant-to-the-bone-slicer<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is an episode from the true crime comedy podcast Last Podcast on the Left.\u00a0 This is the second part of a three-part series covering the disturbing and bizarre history of the lobotomy.\u00a0 This episode focusses primarily on American physician Walter Jackson Freeman II who unethically performed lobotomies along with his surgically trained partner James W. Watts.\u00a0 While there is a lot of dark humor throughout there is also a broad introduction to the ways in which lobotomy was popularized and performed publicly by Freeman and Watts.\u00a0 The precursor to the lobotomy, the \u201cleucotomy\u201d, was performed by Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz.\u00a0 The leucotomy was a psychosurgery that Freeman eagerly embraced as a cure for all mental health issues.\u00a0 Several cases are covered throughout the episode including those who were not suffering debilitating illnesses before being subject to the invasive procedure and the largely negative (if not brutally fatal) side effects faced afterward.\u00a0 There is a large discussion around the frontal lobe being the person\u2019s connection to humanity or the literal soul and the removal of such being the ultimate negative side effect of lobotomies.\u00a0 An interesting topic is that of religion and how those who received lobotomies never returned to practicing largely due to their inability to feel or express human emotion such as faith.\u00a0 Freeman would recklessly popularize the lobotomy by performing the \u201ctransorbital lobotomy\u201d which would not require a surgeon such as Watts to be present.\u00a0 Freeman would go on to perform thousands of lobotomies including those on children resulting in countless deaths.\u00a0 It is a hard episode to listen to with graphic descriptions of a wildly understudied procedure that required a borderline disconnection from humanity on the doctor\u2019s part to perform.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/www.lastpodcastontheleft.com\/episodes\/2020\/6\/19\/episode-414-lobotomies-part-ii-assistant-to-the-bone-slicer This is an episode from the true crime comedy podcast Last Podcast on the Left.\u00a0 This is the second<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/historyofmentalhealth.janisshurtleff.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/surgery-of-the-soul-lpotl-lobotomy\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Surgery of the Soul: LPOTL Lobotomy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-histmental2021","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.mcclurken.org\/HistoryOfMentalHealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.mcclurken.org\/HistoryOfMentalHealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.mcclurken.org\/HistoryOfMentalHealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.mcclurken.org\/HistoryOfMentalHealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.mcclurken.org\/HistoryOfMentalHealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/courses.mcclurken.org\/HistoryOfMentalHealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302,"href":"https:\/\/courses.mcclurken.org\/HistoryOfMentalHealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.mcclurken.org\/HistoryOfMentalHealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.mcclurken.org\/HistoryOfMentalHealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.mcclurken.org\/HistoryOfMentalHealth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}