The Kennedy daughter who underwent a lobotomy surgery was Rosemary Kennedy. In 1941, when she was 23 years old, her father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., arranged for her to undergo the procedure due to her reported developmental delays and increasing “irritable and difficult” behavior. The surgery left her permanently incapacitated and unable to speak intelligibly. She spent the rest of her life in an institution.
António Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949, jointly with Walter Hess, for his “discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses”. Leucotomy, later known as lobotomy, was a surgical procedure involving the severance of nerve fibers in the brain’s prefrontal lobes, initially developed to treat severe mental illnesses. While Moniz’s work was initially lauded as a breakthrough, the procedure later became controversial due to its severe side effects and the rise of effective medications for mental illness.
Walter J. Freeman II
Lobotomies were performed on a wide scale in the 1940s, with one doctor, Walter J. Freeman II, performing more than 3,500 by the late 1960s.
I read about the Kennedy’s at length. Fascinating guy JFK’s father was.
Rosemary’s case was quite tragic. Apparently when the mother was giving birth to her, the nurse for some reason tried to make the mother delay the birth till the doctor arrived. Thus she was partially starved of oxygen. When she was growing up, it was apparent that they was something off about her.
She did things later in life and was not as bright as the other Kennedy’s (they were quite a number… I think something like 8 kids or so).
In her teenage years, she begun to show odd and irritable behavior. The father got fed up and tried to make her more agreeable with the lobotomy by the time she was in her 20s. It wasn’t malicious on his part since lobotomy was considered safe and cutting-edge.
Apparently, what they did was cut open her skull in the prefontal area and told her to talk and they just begun cutting her brain with some scapel until they felt that had speech had calmed somewhat and then they would stop.
They essentially turned her into a vegetable. The father, ever the politician, forbade her name to be mentioned in the household lest it gives the family a bad name and she was institutionalized. I think she died in the 2000s.
Its really sad since the whole incident was due to a doctor who arrived abit late to the delivery and the nurse trying to hold back the birth.
What makes it worse, people won the Nobel Prize based on these, what’s sad though, they’re 1000s upon 1000s of medicine and other medical procedures that have caused harm and still harmful today, and those responsible are still free
True. There are many treatments that with time, have gone by the wayside and some may not even be safe today. One such thing is chemotherapy. Its known to have chronic side effects but its still used for cancer treatment. Many doctors have said they would rather go if they got cancer rather than go through chemo
Their dad Joseph was a no nonsense, crafty go-getter. Made his money from bootlegging and working the stock exchange, Gus presidential ambitions were curtailed when he made a speech that appeared to support Hitler. He then decided his eldest son would be president. When Joseph the son died, he worked his fun-loving drug-taking womaniser JFK to be president.
Of all the Kennedys including JFK, the fathers story is the most fascinating and remarkable. JFK only became president cause of his father’s efforts, connections and wealth
