A history Of Defunct/Downright Abusive Medicial Practices, Lobotomies, Alternative Medicine, Damaged Brains, Psychiatric Treatments, And What I Make Of All That (10.1.01)

( Pictured : A scene from Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein . )

As not to make this any longer I've hidden this here, (A sweet trick from my Beloved Melgelz, fweheheh....... ( ´ ꒳ ` ) (*¯︶¯*) ＼(≧▽≦)／ Yes, I laugh like "Fwehehehehe " Now, Cute, Ain't it? ) But I Want - No, NEED to Point out how Much I Love Spoof Filmss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Young Frankenstein 1974 is such a loving Spoof and Tribute to the Original Frankenstein !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love Spoofs , I love them ! And they are different than Parodies to me as well. By next year I aught to make a page for them , Fwhehehehheh....~ Stay tuned, ;0}>~

I am very interested In the World of Medical Practices and Treatments - Especially Ones Now Very And Greatly De-funct. Yes, yes, A MORBID Curiosity, But They Are Things Some of Us Must Learn About..............Though This Journal Will Focus More on the "Mental" (Though The Mental and Physical Are The Same, Just for Anyone Wondering Why I Didn't I Include a Certain Thing) . Old Psychiatric Practices That People Now Know Were Highly Unethical or Downright Crazy and Life Endangering & Abusive And Are Glad Are Gone Still Are Not Gone, In my Honest Opinion. Just Now in Different, Less Overt and Secretive Sinister Forms that Most of us Mad have Bore Witness Too and Must Reap the Consequences.

Where to Start?

There are many places to start. We could go all the way back to prehistoric times - To animism , To attributing Souls to Objects and Animals and believing once consumed could cure ailments of the Mind Body and Soul . We could go to Trepanation - A practice used to remove Demonic or Foul Energies in The Body / Mind to Relieve the Brain By Drilling a Hole in The Skull to Bleed/Draw Out The Issue . The first trepanned skull was found in neolithic France dated back older than 7,000 years ago. We could go to Mesopotamia, Where Hands Symbolized Control Over An Indivual - Thus The Mental Distress Was Caused By a God And Aptly Illnesses Were Named "Hand of _ " - Where Doctors Would Keep Record of Patient's Visions and Ascribe Them to Meaning. To ancient Egypt, where healers would refer to the most important and well preserved medical papyri Ebers Papyrus to Figure Out What Ailed the Individual, Attemping To Heal the Soul and Heart - Or send the sick to Designated Areas to Sleep In Order to Interpret Their Dreams. We could go ancient Greece and Rome - Where the mentally afflicted would go to pray in temples of Asclepius in hopes to be healed because the state could care less about the lunatics in their quarters , As well of Course As The Four Humours Which Impacted Both Body And Mind. In The Hindu Vedas, Madness Arose From Poison, Demons, Feces, Or Disturbances in the Blood Which Could Be Treated With Prayer Or Behavioral Control.

Acupuncture, Floggings, Excorcisms, Prayer, Natural Remedies... As Christianity Spread Across Europe and The Rest of The World, It Was Even more Common To Believe Mental Illness (Then Called Madness Or Hysteria) The Mad Were Depraved Members of Society, Posessed By Demons. To Be Beaten, Bloodlet, Leeched, Dunked In Ice, Burned, Isolated, To Be Starved, Imprisoned, Ostracizsed, And Assaulted In The Name of "Treatment" And "Saving."

( Pictured : St. Mary Bethlam - More famously Known As Bedlam, Was The First Mental Aslyum Established In Europe In 1247. Notorious For It's Inhumane Treatment Of It's Patients )

On the Topic Of Mental Hospitals, I Feel As If I Simply Must Mention My Favorite - St. Dymphna's Hospital. It Is Located In Carlow , Ireland ........... I cannot Say Anything About It's Treatment Or Operation , But The Story Itself Interested Me. It is Named After The Patroness of Mental Illness, St. Dymphna...... At Fourteen She Was A Devout Christian And Swore A Vow Of Chastity . After The Death Of Her Mother , Her Father Was Distraught , So Distraught It Disturbed The King's Court , So They Begged Of Him to Remarry . He Refused To Do So Unless He Could Find Someone Of Equal Beauty --- Wanting His Own Daughter . After Learning Of His Intent, Dymphna Fled To Belgium With Members Of The King's Counsel For Safety - Where She Built A Place of Refuge For The Mentally Disturbed And Mad. Using His Wealth, Dymphna's Father Found Her With Intent To Kill All Those Who Helped Her Escape And Force Her Back to Ireland. He Ended up Beheading His Own Daughter - And Years Later , A Church Was Constructed In Geel to Honour Her Death. What Interests Me Is How It Became An Overflowing Sanctuary For All Those Deemed Mad, So Much So The Townsfolk Would Let The Mad Into Their Homes and Care and Listen TO Them When The Church Could Not Hold Them. (A practice That Still Endured for 500 Years, Mind You!)

o(〒﹏〒)o This Specific Passageway Sourced From A Site I Learned Of This Really.................... Really................ Got To Me. It Was Peculiar That The Mad Were Being Treated As Human And Were Allowed to Engage In Social Activites With One Another - Not Ostracized And Spat On............ To Be Crushed Under The Heels Of The Pure, Of the Healthy, To Be Beaten, Forced to Expel In Various Assaults That Traumatizes Them Even More, To Be Isolated Alone Like Plague Quarantined, But.............. Just Living Beings, Then Got Better, Because They Were Not Being Tortured Like Most Others Would Do To Them. It Brought A Tear To My Eye . Unfortuneatly The Google Reviews Of This Place............ Aren't Stellar. So I Can Only Guess How Much Worse It's Gotten, Hahahha...........(￣ ￣|||) (눈_눈) Such A Shame, Poor Poor Show....................... But..... It Makes Me Curious. It Tugs At the Divets Left From The Lesions In My Brain And Blows Me Adrift To The World Of Fantasy, Where I am Left Squirming And Giggling Like That of A Schoolgirl Or Pacing Around My Abode Like a Mad Mare In Her Pen................... What Would It Be Like To Visit In The 1400's.......? How Would I Be Treated.........? Would I Engage In Labor With The Sick and Laugh Because There Will Be No Drownings In My Future As Long As I Am In My Sick-House? Hm.. If Only..... Sigh. Many Of My School-Girl Fantasies Venture Into This Territory. If Only.

Modern * ( By This I Mean What I Would Consider Modern. Sorry To All Of The DateNerds Fuming And Malding Over This Because The Modern Era was 1500 - 1945 . I dictate What Happens In My Diary ) Era Extremely Ethical Treatments

Phew... Now With Some Of That History Out Of The Way , Let's get Into Some Treatments and Experiments of The Modern Era, Shall We? ;0]< Hm~?

Centuries And Eras Apart In Origin , Trepanation andd ......................... The Lobotomy Sprung to Prominence in the 1940's During An Experimental Era of Medicine Which Brought Fourth Cardiazol Therapy, Electroshock Therapy, and Many Moreso - Spawned by neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz (Who Won A Nobel Prize In 1949 For His Advancements.) Now Now, The Lobotomy Was Dismissed And Doubted Since It's Birth - And It's Popularity Was Accentuated By How Shocking It Was .
I add that tidbit because I honestly can't stand when people call older generations "Stupid" and "Barbaric" For their Beliefs or Practices, It Drives me Madder than a hatter! It takes Too much Blame off the People of Those Times , and Also Applies Our Modern Sensibilites to Them . It takes no Accountability for the context of the time, What tools they Had, and Also - Just Like Right Now - People Will Create things for Means of Control, Suppression , And Conformity .
The People who Devised the Lobotomy were not Backwards Idiots Who Didn't Know What They were Doing , They believed The Sick to Be Lesser and Instead of giving them the Care they Deserved and Needed, They harmed Them Further Because it Made Their "caretakers" Pleased, Just like How they Banished the Sick in Aslyums Where they were Abused and Got Worse, Not Because they were Dumb and Backwards, But Because It was "Safer" To Have the Scum Hidden Away and Left to Rot than to dare be Infected by their Presence, to abuse them in the Name of "Healing" Because Their Law Allowed them So. It's damn foolish to believe you are Safe from Viewing others as Evil Because you are Advanced, You would Never fall for Propaganda, That You are Ontologically Incapable of Harm.
This Is How They Get You, How Your Own Beliefs That View Others as Subhuman Are Justified Because "You're Different", "You aren't Backwards and Idiotic." It's a Hell Cycle That is Encouraged and No one is Immune to.

"In some instances, the best that can be done for the family is to return the patient to them in an innocuous state, a vertiable household pet."

Freeman and James Watts worked together to "cure" patients - 40% of them being gay men Sent to Psychiatric Institutions or Prisons for sodomy. It Wasn't That The Lobotomy Was Made Specifically to Cure Homosexuality, But At The Time The Surgery Arose Homosexuality Was Seen as A Madness Arising from Schizophrenia, Much like Women Who Didn't Want To Have Sex, Or Troublesome Children....... Freeman Would Charge 25$ Per Lobotomy, And Pose to Have His Picture Taken, Resulting in Further Damage to His Patients. His Own Medical Partner Watts Even Had to Stop Working With Freeman Because He found His Practices Disgusting, Failed to Use Any Sort of Sterilization When Handling Patients, And Offered the Idea of How It'd Be Better For These People To Be Further Damaged Than Stay How They Are (And I Quote "Every Patient Will Lose Something from This Operation, But, Spontaneously, Some Will Sparkle."

This Is Still Present In Our Years, And Most Likely Many Years To Come. As Of Right Now (2001) The Last Lobotomy, In 1967 Would've Been 34 Years Ago. The Dehumanization and Experimentation on the Mad is Something I Will Always Speak Up Upon. People Would Much Rather Obliterate Every Last Fragment of Their Peers, But Especially Their Children- To Force them into a State of Normalcy, And it Is Funded by The State. To Turn them Into Something That Is Acceptable to Them And Not What Shatters the Idea of the Loving Family, While Yelling at Themselves That They "Aren't Like That" & Could Never Be As Mad, When Really, Everyone can Become Mad, and Everyone Who Is So Adamant About Fixing This is Projecting Their Own Inability to Accept the Deviance in themselves onto their Children.
I believe, That every Sick Person, Including Myself, Deserves, Genuine Kindness, and Affection, Suited to their Needs, Forever and Always. I am not a Machine Programmed to go Obsolete. I am Just as Real as You. Treat Me as Such.

"Case 624. Simple schizophrenia patients make nice household pets after operations. (a) Before lobotomy. (b) One year lobotomy."