Last Resort: Psychosurgery and the Limits of Medicine

by Jack D. Pressman

• ISBN13: 9780521353717
• ISBN10: 0521353718
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-02-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

During the 1940s and 1950s, tens of thousands of Americans underwent some form of psychosurgery; that is, their brains were operated upon for the putative purpose of treating mental illness. From today's perspective, such medical practices appear foolhardy at best, perhaps even barbaric; most commentators thus have seen in the story of lobotomy an important warning about the kinds of hazards that society will face whenever incompetent or malicious physicians are allowed to overstep the boundaries of valid medical science. Last Resort challenges the previously accepted psychosurgery story and raises new questions about what we should consider its important lessons.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	viii	(3)
Acknowledgments	xi	(2)
Jack D. Pressman: An Appreciation	xiii
Gerald N. Grob
Introduction: A Stab in the Dark	1	(17)
1 Psychiatry's Renaissance: The Problem of Mental Disorder, 1921-1935	18	(29)
2 Sufficient Promise: John F. Fulton and the Origins of Lobotomy	47	(55)
3 Certain Benefit: Initial Impressions of the Operation	102	(45)
4 Active Treatment: Somatic Therapy and State Hospital Reform	147	(47)
5 Human Salvage: Why Psychosurgery Worked in 1949 (and Not Now)	194	(42)
6 Localizing Decisions: Psychosurgery and the Art of Medicine	236	(82)
7 The Politics of Precision: The Quest for a Better Lobotomy	318	(44)
8 Medicine Controlled: Psychiatry's Evolution as a Science and a Profession	362	(39)
Epilogue: The New Synthesis	401	(42)
Appendix	443	(10)
Statistical Portrait of Psychosurgery at McLean Hospital, 1938-1954	443	(5)
Codes of Patients and Physicians Cited in Chapters 3 and 6	448	(5)
Notes	453	(80)
Sources	533	(4)
Collections Cited	533	(2)
Annual Reports Examined	535	(2)
Index	537