My Lobotomy

Download or read book My Lobotomy written by Howard Dully and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-09-04 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this heartfelt memoir from one of the youngest recipients of the transorbital lobotamy, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption. At twelve, Howard Dully was guilty of the same crimes as other boys his age: he was moody and messy, rambunctious with his brothers, contrary just to prove a point, and perpetually at odds with his parents. Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital—or ice pick—lobotomy. Abandoned by his family within a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn’t until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life together. But even as he began to live the “normal” life he had been denied, Howard struggled with one question: Why? There were only three people who would know the truth: Freeman, the man who performed the procedure; Lou, his cold and demanding stepmother who brought Howard to the doctor’s attention; and his father, Rodney. Of the three, only Rodney, the man who hadn’t intervened on his son’s behalf, was still living. Time was running out. Stable and happy for the first time in decades, Howard began to search for answers. Through his research, Howard met other lobotomy patients and their families, talked with one of Freeman’s sons about his father’s controversial life’s work, and confronted Rodney about his complicity. And, in the archive where the doctor’s files are stored, he finally came face to face with the truth. Revealing what happened to a child no one—not his father, not the medical community, not the state—was willing to protect, My Lobotomy exposes a shameful chapter in the history of the treatment of mental illness. Yet, ultimately, this is a powerful and moving chronicle of the life of one man.

Download or read book Messing with My Head written by Howard Dully and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Howard Dully was 12 years old when he was given a lobotomy. In this text he shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption.

Download or read book The Lobotomist written by Jack El-Hai and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-02-09 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman’s documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius. The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Although many patients did not benefit from the thousands of lobotomies Freeman performed, others believed their lobotomies changed them for the better. Drawing on a rich collection of documents Freeman left behind and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look into the life of this complex scientific genius and traces the physician's fascinating life and work.

Download or read book Patient H.M. written by Luke Dittrich and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Oliver Sacks meets Stephen King”* in this propulsive, haunting journey into the life of the most studied human research subject of all time, the amnesic known as Patient H.M. For readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks comes a story that has much to teach us about our relentless pursuit of knowledge. Winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • New York Post • NPR • The Economist • New York • Wired • Kirkus Reviews • BookPage In 1953, a twenty-seven-year-old factory worker named Henry Molaison—who suffered from severe epilepsy—received a radical new version of the then-common lobotomy, targeting the most mysterious structures in the brain. The operation failed to eliminate Henry’s seizures, but it did have an unintended effect: Henry was left profoundly amnesic, unable to create long-term memories. Over the next sixty years, Patient H.M., as Henry was known, became the most studied individual in the history of neuroscience, a human guinea pig who would teach us much of what we know about memory today. Patient H.M. is, at times, a deeply personal journey. Dittrich’s grandfather was the brilliant, morally complex surgeon who operated on Molaison—and thousands of other patients. The author’s investigation into the dark roots of modern memory science ultimately forces him to confront unsettling secrets in his own family history, and to reveal the tragedy that fueled his grandfather’s relentless experimentation—experimentation that would revolutionize our understanding of ourselves. Dittrich uses the case of Patient H.M. as a starting point for a kaleidoscopic journey, one that moves from the first recorded brain surgeries in ancient Egypt to the cutting-edge laboratories of MIT. He takes readers inside the old asylums and operating theaters where psychosurgeons, as they called themselves, conducted their human experiments, and behind the scenes of a bitter custody battle over the ownership of the most important brain in the world. Patient H.M. combines the best of biography, memoir, and science journalism to create a haunting, endlessly fascinating story, one that reveals the wondrous and devastating things that can happen when hubris, ambition, and human imperfection collide. “An exciting, artful blend of family and medical history.”—The New York Times *Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Download or read book Grt & Desperate Cures written by Elliot S. Valenstein and published by . This book was released on 1986-05-11 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Lobotomy Letters written by Mical Raz and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise and widespread acceptance of psychosurgery constitutes one of the most troubling chapters in the history of modern medicine. By the late 1950s, tens of thousands of Americans had been lobotomized as treatment for a host of psychiatric disorders. Though the procedure would later be decried as devastating and grossly unscientific, many patients, families, and physicians reported veritable improvement from the surgery; some patients were even considered cured. The Lobotomy Letters gives an account of why this controversial procedure was sanctioned by psychiatrists and doctors of modern medicine. Drawing from original correspondence penned by lobotomy patients and their families as well as from the professional papers of lobotomy pioneer and neurologist Walter Freeman, the volume reconstructs how physicians, patients, and their families viewed lobotomy and analyzes the reasons for its overwhelming use. Mical Raz, MD/PhD, is a physician and historian of medicine.

Download or read book Kid Lobotomy, Vol. 1: A Lad Insane written by Peter Milligan and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-06-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Come as you are, leave as someone else. In the winding hallways of The Suites, anything can happen--whether you like it or not! Join Kid, the proprietor of this fine hotel, as he tries to hold on to his father's business--and his own sanity. Kid, as he's affectionately referred to, is the youngest child of Big Daddy, an aging hotelier with more than his fair share of dark secrets tucked into the corners of the crown jewel of his empire: The Suites, where the guests are in danger of losing much more than their luggage. See, Kid has shed a few (okay, more than a few) brain cells in his day, which naturally makes him qualified to perform a lobotomy or two. And why let those brain bits go to waste when he can use them to help--or unwittingly harm--his patients? Ultimately, Kid hopes to restore some of his sanity. But can he navigate his sister's devious plotting, vivid hallucinations, and his own crumbling mental state to uncover the truth about his cursed lineage and face what runs rampant throughout the torturous hotel hallways? Simply put, you've never read anything like this. You won't be able to look away. Collects issues #1-6 of the ongoing series.