Lobotomy For World War II Veterans: Psychiatric Care by U.S. Government

[Jesus Malverde]

Roman Tritz’s memories of the past six decades are blurred by age and delusion. But one thing he remembers clearly is the fight he put up the day the orderlies came for him.

“They got the notion they were going to come to give me a lobotomy,” says Mr. Tritz, a World War II bomber pilot. “To hell with them.”

The orderlies at the veterans hospital pinned Mr. Tritz to the floor, he recalls. He fought so hard that eventually they gave up. But the orderlies came for him again on Wednesday, July 1, 1953, a few weeks before his 30th birthday.

This time, the doctors got their way.

The U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans—and likely hundreds more—during and after World War II, according to a cache of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by The Wall Street Journal. Besieged by psychologically damaged troops returning from the battlefields of North Africa, Europe and the Pacific, the Veterans Administration performed the brain-altering operation on former servicemen it diagnosed as depressives, psychotics and schizophrenics, and occasionally on people identified as homosexuals.

http://projects.wsj.com/lobotomyfiles/

[struggle4progress]

1. It was a barbaric operation -- but it was common at the time, and the US goverment

wasn't the main purveyor: Walter Freeman, who invented the name "lobotomy" and was one of the great popularizers of the procedure, is estimated to have performed 2500 himself -- including one day on which he performed 25