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Psychosurgery Essay

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Once Ega Moniz suggested this new operation, the field of psychosurgery emerged immensely as he was the person to first use the word “psychosurgery.” Moniz considered it essential to disturb the fibers of the frontal lobe in order for the operation to be sufficient. Moniz’s colleague used ethanol injections in the first sequence of surgeries. Then, the procedure expanded to using a rod with a wire loop that could enter and twist to remove parts of neural tissue. Hundreds of these operations took place and treated as successful, following post-operative evaluations. However, there were not large amounts of notes taken after surgery was complete and validation was unable to occur due to the multiple patients placed in asylums and never heard of again. Although a critical eye would notice the discrepancy the reporting, he still earned a Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1949. He was about to win over people by producing articles and books on the subject and …show more content…

Reported surgeries didn’t have significant effects on curing the behavioral deficits and had some severe side-effects such as inertia, unresponsiveness, and decreased attention span. Therefore, many times the side effects ended up worse than the problem that psychosurgery proclaimed to cure. It also became known that there were many professionals who were unqualified to perform the procedure that were operating in unsterile environments. Thus, psychosurgeries became less popular and illegal in some place, while people criticized for only silencing symptoms rather than curing them. However, it continued as a treatment for psychosurgery until the introduction of chlorpromazine. Chlorpromazine was the first pharmacological therapy for insanity. The introduction of psychiatric drugs and the rejection of current psychosurgerical operation led to a downfall in

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