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OKAY BACK FROM THE OPERATING ROOM 🩺

In November 1941 Rosemary Kennedy Was Wheeled Into An Operating Room

She Was The Sister Of John F Kennedy And She Was 23 Years Old

Her Operation Began At 8 In The Morning

Walter Freeman And James Watts Were The Doctors Performing It

Freeman Was A Neurologist So He Had Enlisted Watts As His Neurosurgeon

She Had Been Mildly Sedated

A Local Anesthetic Called Novocain Was Given To Her

She Lay Awake On The Table With Her Head Resting On A Sandbag

Biographer Laurence Leamer Writes She Was Very Much Aware

Watts Went In Through The Top Of Her Head On Both Sides

While Watts Cut Freeman Asked Her Questions

Freeman Had Her Recite The Lord's Prayer Or Sing God Bless America

He Also Had Her Count Backward

Watts Later Said They Estimated How Far To Cut By How She Responded

As Long As She Kept Singing And Counting The Cutting Went On

When She Began To Become Incoherent They Stopped

It Quickly Became Clear The Operation Had Caused Catastrophic Damage

She Could Not Walk Or Speak Intelligibly Afterward

Leamer Writes That She Sat For Hours Staring At The Walls

She Needed Care For The Rest Of Her Life

Most Of It Was Spent At An Institution In Wisconsin

She Died In 2005 At The Age Of 86

The Cutting Followed A Method Freeman And Watts Had Developed

Leamer Describes Each Step Of It

Watts First Pushed The Tubing From A Large Needle Into Her Brain

It Went In About Two And A Half Inches

Then He Pushed A Spatula Into The Opening The Tubing Left

The Spatula Looked Like A Blunt Butter Knife

Twisting It Upward Destroyed White Matter In Her Frontal Lobe

He Made Three More Cuts And Reinserted The Spatula Each Time

Another Biographer Says Watts Swung It Up And Down To Cut

The Doctors Called It A Precision Operation

Leamer Writes That Each Operation Was Still Different

In Sicker Patients They Were More Likely To Cut Farther Back

White Matter Was The Tissue The Spatula Destroyed

It Is Made Up Mainly Of Nerve Fibers

Its Color Comes From A Fatty Coating Around Those Fibers

Freeman Built On An Operation Devised By Egas Moniz

A 1949 Nobel Prize Speech Explained The Aim Of Moniz's Operation

The Goal Was To Interrupt Frontal Lobe Links To The Rest Of The Brain

Those Links Run Through The White Matter

The Speech Called His Operation Frontal Or Prefrontal Leucotomy

Freeman Modified It And Renamed It The Lobotomy

His Version Cut The Link Between The Frontal Lobes And The Thalamus

Lobotomy Was Still New When Rosemary Kennedy Had Hers

Leamer Counts Only 350 To 500 Worldwide By The Fall Of 1941

About 80 Of Them Had Been Done By Freeman And Watts

Freeman Kept Meticulous Records On Those 80 Patients

Each Was Chronically Depressed Or Schizophrenic Or A Chronic Alcoholic

Many Had Come To Him After Years Of Treatment And Disappointment

Almost All Were Far Older Than Rosemary Kennedy

Only One Was Younger Than She Was

Freeman Knew That Patients Had To Be Chosen With Great Care

Leamer Calls Operating On Her An Extreme Measure By Any Definition

Across The US 684 Lobotomies Were Performed Between 1940 And 1944

The Numbers Rose Sharply Toward The End Of The 1940s

That Rise Followed Fervent Promotion By Freeman And Watts

A Medical Journal Essay Ties It To Freeman's Transorbital Method

That Method Entered The Brain From Above The Eye

1949 Was The Peak Year For Lobotomies In The US

That Year Alone 5,074 Were Performed

By 1951 The US Total Had Passed 18,608

Ten Years Earlier Leamer's Worldwide Count Was Only A Few Hundred