Harmless and Effective Lobotomies: A History Lesson

From experimental lobotomies to experimental gene injections: Will we learn?

By: Tessa Lena

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• The first lobotomy was performed by the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt in the late 19th century

• For a few decades, his research was sitting on the backburner until in the early 1930s, Portuguese neurologist António Moniz and his colleague Almeida Lima brought it back

• In 1936, the New York Times lauded lobotomy as “th…