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America were nazi scientists too

Pharmacological shock was a general term for shock therapy by injecting chemicals such as insulin or metrazol ^[4]. Psychiatrists in the 1930s also experimented with other chemicals including camphor ^[5] or ammonium chloride ^[6] to induce convulsions in their patients.

Metrazol shock therapy involves injecting a patient with Metrazol (cardiazol), a drug that quickly induces powerful brain seizures. It was discovered by Hungarian physician and researcher Ladislas J. Meduna (1896-1964) in 1934 and further researched by Francis Reitmann ^[2] It was soon superseded by electroconvulsive therapy, because it was difficult to control and had many adverse effects. The violence of the convulsions produced hairline fractures in the vertebrae of many patients, especially those who already suffered from vitamin D deficiency due to the poor diet in psychiatric hospitals

Insulin shock therapy involves injecting a patient with a large amount of insulin, which causes convulsions and coma by provoking brain hypoglycemia. It was discovered by Polish physician and researcher Manfred Sakel (1900-1957) in 1933 and was used well until the 1950s for the treatment of depression and psychosis. However, the insulin coma could become irreversible, and a 1939 report found the procedure had a 1.3% mortality from this cause ^[1]. It is also rarely used now.

Malarial fever therapy involves the inoculation of malarial protozoa into the bloodstream of patients, in order to provoke episodes of intense fever and unconsciousness, which are sometimes followed by convulsions. The method was discovered by an Austrian physician Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940) in the 1910s, who got the Nobel Prize for his discovery. For a while, it was used for treating the general paresis of the insane, caused by tertiary syphilis. It is no longer used.

Rose Marie Kennedy (September 13, 1918 – January 7, 2005) was the third child and first daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, born a year after the U.S. President John F. Kennedy. She underwent a lobotomy at the age of 23, after which she was totally incapacitated for the rest of her life.

Placid and easygoing as a child and teenager, the maturing Rosemary became increasingly assertive in her personality. She was subject to violent mood swings. Some observers have since attributed this behavior to her difficulties in keeping up with her active siblings as well as the hormonal surges associated with sexual maturation. In any case, the family had difficulty dealing with the often stormy Rosemary, who had begun to engage in physical fights and to sneak out at night from the convent where she was being educated and cared for—and her family feared that without proper supervision she might become pregnant or worse.

In 1941, when Rosemary was 23, her father was told by doctors that a lobotomy would help calm her "mood swings that the family found difficult to handle at home" [1]. Joseph Kennedy had the procedure performed by neurosurgeon Walter Freeman, director of the laboratories at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., together with his partner, James W. Watts, MD, from the University of Virginia. Watts performed his neurosurgery training at Massachusetts General Hospital and later became chief of neurosurgery at George Washington University Hospital. Highly regarded, Dr. Watts became the 91st president of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia.

At the time of the surgery the procedure was in its infancy. Freeman and Watts had only performed 65 previous lobotomies.

The following are the details of this particular case:

Dr. Watts performed the surgery while Dr. Freeman supervised. In an interview with investigative reporter Ronald Kessler, Dr. Watts described the procedure:

We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch." The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. "We put an instrument inside," he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." ... When she began to become incoherent, they stopped.
– James W. Watts (Kessler, 226)

Instead of producing the desired result, however, the lobotomy reduced Rosemary to an infantile mentality that left her incontinent and staring blankly at walls for hours. Her verbal skills were reduced to unintelligible babble. Rose Kennedy remarked that although the lobotomy stopped her daughter's violent behavior, it left her completely incapacitated. "Rose was devastated; she considered it the first of the Kennedy family tragedies" (Kessler, 237).

Although Freeman performed more than 3,000 lobotomies on individuals with mental illness during his career, [2] today, his lobotomy treatments are viewed as discredited by the mental health community.

"If she did division and multiplication, she was over an IQ of 75. She was not mentally retarded. … It could be she had an IQ of 90 in a family where everyone was 130, so it looked like retardation, but she did not fall into IQ 75 and below, which is the definition of mental retardation. … There is no way I can picture her at less that a 90 IQ, but in that family, 90 would be considered retarded."

Kessler adds that in Dr. Brown's opinion, the family's treatment of Rosemary led to her mental illness. "I think it's likely she was somewhat slower than the others. Then she was treated as if she was retarded. Then it becomes reactive depression, including rages and loss of control. That is mental illness. … The reason she got depressed was that she reacted to being treated as lesser member of the family." While the children tried to include her in their activities, "given the highly competitive environment of the Kennedy family, they could not help but to communicate to her that she was not up to their standards." The fact that Joe banished Rosemary to live with his aide demonstrated his rejection of her. "The stigma of mental illness in those days was like tuberculosis or cancer or worse. Mental retardation is more benignly not your fault. … Even in [Dr. Watts's] day, performing a lobotomy on someone who was mentally retarded would have been medical malpractice."

According to Kessler, Dr. Brown called the suppression of the truth "the biggest mental health cover-up in history." Since the "public story" is still that Rosemary was retarded, the "lack of support for mental illness is part of a total lifelong family denial of what was really so. … Some of us knew the secret and kept it secret …" (Kessler, 232–235).

On September 13, 1848, Phineas P Gage was working outside the small town of Cavendish, Vermont on the construction of a railroad track where he was employed as a foreman. One of his duties involved filling the hole with gunpowder, adding a fuse, and then packing in sand with the aid of a large tamping iron. Gage was momentarily distracted and forgot to pour the sand into one hole. Thus, when he went to tamp the sand down, the tamping iron sparked against the rock and ignited the gunpowder, causing the iron to be blown through Gage's head with such force that it landed almost thirty yards (27 meters) behind him.

The three foot (1 m) long tamping iron with a diameter of 1.25 inches (3.2 cm) weighing thirteen and a half pounds (6.12 kg) entered his skull below his left cheek bone and exited after passing through the anterior frontal cortex and white matter. Whether the lesion involved both frontal lobes, or was limited only to the left side, remains a matter of controversy. Remarkably, after such a traumatic accident, Gage regained consciousness within a few minutes, was able to speak, and survived a 45-minute ride back to his boarding house while sitting in a cart.

As the doctor arrived, he was reportedly conscious, and had a regular pulse of about 60 beats per minute, suggesting that he suffered only minimal blood loss. His left pupil was still reacting to direct light (and stayed that way for the following 10 days), which indicates that the left optic and oculomotor nerves were still functioning, supporting the hypothesis that the tamping iron must have passed laterally to the left optic nerve. After a seemingly complete recovery from such a serious injury, Gage was soon back at work.

While early studies by Hanna Damasio and colleagues ^[1] suggested a bilateral damage to the medial frontal lobes, a recent study by Ratiu and colleagues^[2], based on a CT scan of Gage's skull suggests that the extent of Gage's brain injury must have been more limited than previously thought.

In light of modern medical science, a bilateral damage of the frontal brain by a projectile measuring 1.25 inches in diameter and weighing thirteen pounds, would unlikely be compatible with survival, since this would imply an extensive damage to vital vascular structures, such as the superior sagittal sinus (however, the rod did not emerge exactly in the midline, and may have missed the sinus by passing beneath it). Nevertheless, Gage survived the traumatic event and reportedly developed personality changes. This is further supported by works done by Raveena, who found such effects to be caused by decreased stess levels, which aided Gage's speedy recovery.

Current Mood: calm

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