Is it true that in the 20th century there was such an advertisement for lobotomy?

On the Internet is popular photo leaflets offering lobotomy as a means of combating depression, migraine and other health problems. We decided to check whether such an advertisement was really distributed in the last century.

The picture, looking like a clipping from an old newspaper, depicts a human head with a tool for lobotomy, introduced through the eye socket into the brain. The signature on the image reads: “Do you have depression? Do you suffer from anxiety and migraines? You may need a lobotomy! ” The following are the other problems that this procedure allegedly helps: schizophrenia, panic disorder, post -traumatic syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, etc. The “uncontrollable loved ones” are also mentioned. Image leaflets can be found on entertainment Portals And forums, in social networks ("VKontakte" X, Facebook*, Telegram) and on Blog-platforms. 

Lobotomy - An operation in which one of the shares of the brain is separated from the rest of the areas or is removed altogether. In the middle of the 20th century, this procedure was used as a radical therapeutic measure designed to calm patients with mental illness. Technologies The lobotomy was distinguished: with a transsorbital pointed instrument (leukot), the patient was introduced through the eye socket, with prefrontal - holes were drilled or made in the skull. In some cases, before the lobotomy was carried out trepanation Skulls so that the movements of leukotoma in the brain can be visually controlled.

The earliest publication of the viral image, which “verified” was found by searching for the pictures of Google, is fast On Instagram* of the user of Demonicpinfestation on January 3, 2017. The picture is accompanied by a signature with a clearly comic call to make a lobotomy using the “Lobotomy tools” icon, which can be bought on the Demonicpinfestation.BigCartel.com website. Demonic Pinfestation specializes in production and sale badges horror-theme, and in their assortment there is also a decoration in the form tools For lobotomy. 

The fact of the news agency Reuters We received from the Demonic Pinfestation confirmation that the image was created by the company to advertise the same badge. Moreover, the picture was subsequently edited by other users - in some publications It visually noticeably differs from the original source. The image was probably aged that it would be more like a clipping from a newspaper in the middle of the last century. In the English -language segment of the Internet, this picture often Accompanied The statements that science should not be trusted, because earlier scientists recommended lobotomy with the widest series of diseases, although the harm from it sometimes greatly exceeded the benefit. The representative of Demonic Pinfestation in the comment of Reuters expressed regret that her work is used in this way.

Despite the radical nature of the operation, lobotomy was indeed popular in the last century. For the first time on a man, she was held by the Portuguese neurologist Antoniu Egash Monish In 1936, for which 13 years later he received the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine. Most Distributed Lobotomy was in the USA and Great Britain-in the late 1940s, at the peak of its popularity, thousands of operations were carried out a year. One of the hot supporters of this procedure that promoted its use in the United States was a neurologist Walter Freemanwhose name also appears on the analyzed sheet with advertising. Since the mid-1950s, the popularity of lobotomy began to decline. The reason was that, firstly, the result did not always correspond to expectations (the symptoms of the disease stopped, the patient behaved calmer, but simply ceased to be himself, his personality was destroyed), and secondly, at about the same time the first effective medications appeared to treat mental illness. In other countries, for example in the USSR, the lobotomy was used much less often - only with severe schizophrenia, when no other treatment helped. As a result, in the 1940s, only a few hundred such operations were carried out in the Soviet Union, and in 1950, lobotomy was completely banned.

Thus, the image that promotes the lobotomy in depression, anxiety and other disorders is not an old advertisement for a real procedure or clinic that conducts it. The picture was created only in 2017-to promote thematic jewelry, among which the manufacturing company also had an icon with tools for lobotomy. The text in the image (and under the first-pure post) is a satire, and not real indications for such a procedure. However, advertising of lobotomy could well exist, since in the USA, Great Britain and a number of other Western countries in the middle of the 20th century, treatment with the help of this procedure was relatively popular.

*Russian authorities They think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns social networks Facebook and Instagram, an extremist organization, its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Photo on the cover: Instagram Demonicpinfestation

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. N+1. Nothing better came to mind
2. BBC. The Strange and Curious History of Lobotomy
3. Is the picture of the treatment of headaches in 1895 true?
4. Is it true that the photograph depicts an accident from filming the Nutella pasta advertising?