My Lobotomy

The first library book I finished was a book called "My Lobotomy" by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. It's not written very well, but it is a really interesting story. This poor guy. Howard Dully was 12 years old when his wicked stepmother decided that he needed a serious fix for his behavior problems. Around the same time, there was a doctor named Walter Freeman who was looking to further his research in Transorbital Lobotomies. In case you're not as well-read on the subject as I am, that means they basically take an ice pick, stick it through your eye socket, over the eyeball, and for 10 minutes they SCRAMBLE YOUR BRAIN. Freeman thought this would stop whatever problems you had by ruining the connections that behavior had to your brain - for example, if you were depressed, the lobotomy would scramble your brain to sort of make you forget how to be depressed. Lots of patients died, lots of patients became vegetables, lots of patients had severe problems throughout life, and a few patients felt that they were 100% cured! Great success rate. This is the story of Howard Dully who was given the Transorbital Lobotomy at the age of 12, and since no one ever talked about why he had to have it, 40 years later he went on a journey to find out why he was given one. Its pretty interesting -only 270 pages, and I breezed through it in 2 days, about 6-8 hours I would say.

The original story of Howard Dully was featured in an NPR special. They originally were doing the story on Walter Freeman. He was big into lobotomies, and he really thought it was going to be the future of curing brain diseases. He documented every surgery he had ever done with extensive notes, and before, during, and after photos, so NPR had plenty of material to do a story on him. But, when they met Dully and heard his story, they switched focus, and had him run the special. It was one of NPR's most highly regarded specials - they got more emails on that story than any other story they had ever done.

Below is a picture of Dully during his lobotomy. In order to sedate him before the procedure, he had extensive electroshock therapy - he doesn't even remember anything that happened that day, only what was written in Freeman's notes. It was a ten-minute procedure that affected him for the rest of his life. If you're squeamish, you may have a rough time with this picture, just a heads-up. This is his new tool used to do the lobotomy, he no longer used an actual ice pick in his procedures.



It was a pretty remarkable story, and in the end, you just want to figure out how you could help Dully and make his childhood better. But, it was a sign of the times, and he came out okay in the end (or he came out as good as you can after having your brain scrambled.) I'd recommend it if you're interested in what you've read above! 1 down, 3 more books to go!