Burkhardt's Leucotomy Experiment

Swiss physician Gottlieb Burkhardt was the first to show evidence of pacifying patients through manipulation of the human brain. He was influenced by Friedrich Goltz, who practiced on dogs with brain ablation. Beginning in the late 1880s, he removed parts of the brain’s cortex in six patients, of an insane asylum he oversaw, that were experiencing mental illnesses and managed them afterward in the asylum. In 1935, Carlyle Jacobsen and John Fulton performed frontal lobe ablation on chimpanzees and Antonio Egas Moniz, who is credited for developing lobotomy, began similar experiments on humans. Moniz believed the behavioral problems his patients experienced originated from fixed circuits in the brain. Along with the assistance of Lima, he conducted many leucotomy operations. The operation consisted of drilling holes into the patient’s head and injecting ethyl alcohol into the prefrontal cortex to destroy the fibers that connect it to other parts of the brain. Moniz later created the leucotome, which was specifically designed to sever the neuronal fibers that connected the brain’s prefrontal cortex and the thalamus. The results of these operations, however, were mixed. Few patients displayed improvements, some showed no change, and others died. But, because of the scarce methods available at the …show more content…
The use of lobotomy was criticized heavily in the United States, but Freeman used the media to promote lobotomy as a miracle procedure. This lead to a demand for the operation by acquiring the American audience. Freeman later changed and replaced the procedure with the transorbital lobotomy. This procedure called for the use of an orbitoclast, which was a modified ice pick. Freeman would insert the ice pick into the patient’s eye socket with a hammer and move it around to separate the frontal lobe and