Word: frontally
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Sixty-five years ago the superintendent of a Swiss insane asylum, Gottlieb Burckhardt, cured a patient of auditory hallucinations (hearing things) by removing part of his brain. Thirteen years ago Portuguese surgeons invented and other surgeons developed the now-popular operation called pre-frontal lobotomy to treat certain types of insanity...
Lobotomy, a close second in popularity, is a tension-relieving brain operation (TIME, Dec. 23). More than 3,000 U.S. citizens have already had pre-frontal lobotomies, and the current rate is some 500 a year. The operation slices through a section of the frontal lobe, and is supposed to break up the disturbing mental patterns that have unbalanced the patient. In six out of ten cases lobotomy seems to be successful. But one patient in ten is relaxed too much by the operation; three in ten remain tense. Psychiatrists recommend the operation only for otherwise incurable psychotics...
...Frontal Attack. In Spartanburg, R. C. Wyatt, 79, sore because Waitress Bessie Meheles gave him the cold shoulder, planted dynamite near the restaurant where she worked, blasted off its front...
Nerve cutting is a drastic operation, and doctors know they cannot predict all its effects. Like the vagus nerve operation for ulcers, and pre-frontal lobotomy for insanity (TIME, Dec. 23), cutting the phrenic nerves impairs some internal functions, but doctors have observed no serious effects. Their conclusion: nerve cutting is justified as a last resort...
...Operation. The operation is delicate. The surgeon cuts two openings in the skull, one on each side above the temples, removes each bone button (to be replaced later), cuts and folds back the brain covering, the dura mater, then carefully slices through a measured section of the frontal lobes' white tissue. As the knife cuts the nerve fibers, the patient's tension visibly relaxes. He grows confused, dull, slow in speech, childish...