From Trephination to The Lobotomobile and Beyond

Prehistoric humans practised trephination: drilling a hole into the human skull. This practice may have been practised as a way to release the "evil spirits" believed to be causing epilepsy and mental disorders.

1525 engraving of trepanation by Peter Treveris

The ancient Greeks believed that mental illness was caused by an imbalance of the four humors: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and water (phlegm).

From 1450 to 1750, witchcraft was thought to be the root of all evil. Mental disorders were treated with prayers and exorcisms. Many a lonely, odd, old woman who just happened have a wart on her nose, was accused of copulating with demons and sentenced to be burnt at the stake. The last known witch to be executed was a Swiss woman, Anna Göldi, who in June 1782, was tortured and then, admitted entering into a pact with the Devil.

Dorothea Lynde Dix(Wikipedia)

Hippocrates of Cos, known as the father of Medicine, believed that mental disorders like most other health problems, had a natural cause. In the fifth century B.C., Hippocrates reported how a man with epilepsy cured his seizures by not eating; probably due to the increase in ketones.

In the 1840s, an American Dorothea Dix, noticed how people with mental illness were chained and beaten and left alone in the darkness, without any clothing or any form of heating in the winter. She was instrumental in establishing 32 state hospitals for the mentally ill.

By the 1920s, however, there were still no real treatments for mental disorders and many quack cures, like, cooling the body, injecting malaria and removing teeth, were tried.

In 1935, Antonio Egas Moniz, was at a conference when he heard how a crazy monkey had been cured by cutting the fibres connecting the frontal lobe of the brain, to the limbic system, under anaesthetic. Soon Moniz began his revolutionary treatment: the frontal lobotomy.

Around 40,000 people were lobotomized in the United States and though the process did not always go to plan, in many cases, suffers of paranoia and anxiety found relief. However, surgical cowboys like Walter Freeman, gave the treatment a bad name.

Brain animation: left frontal lobe highlighted in red. Moniz targeted the frontal lobes in the leucotomy procedure which he first conceived in 1933.

Freeman would travel about in his van called the "lobotomobile" and line up his patients like a production line, insert his instrument in above the eyeball, give a tap of a hammer and in about 3 minutes, he was done. And sometimes, he would actually use a carpenter's hammer. No permission was sought from patients or relatives.

Luckily, by 1954, anti-psychotic drugs like Thorazine hit the scene. While not a cure, drugs have greatly improved mental health treatment.