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CHARLESTON @ — A former staff physician at the big Weston State Hospital has warned against any relaxation of caution in use of the ‘“‘icepick’’ operation in West Virginia mental institutions. The warning comes although the surgical effort to aid the mentally ill and at the same time ease the burden of mental care in West Virginia has been far more suc cessful than it was expected to Dr. Charles W. Powell reports his findings in a study of 71 pa tients five years after their opera tions, in the September issue of the West Virginia Medical Jour nal. Powell left Weston recently to become associated with the Vet erans Administration at Little Rock, Ark. Dr. H. Sinclair Tait, superinten dent at Weston, expressed high praise for his former staff, mem ber and his painstaking study, and concurred in his findings. Tait, himself, has performed 50 to 60 of the operations. Cushioned in medical terminol ogy, Powell's conclusions still are unmistakably clear: 1. Extreme care should be ex ercised in choosing those for the operation. 2. Some patients are helped; many are not. The ‘“‘icepick” surgery involves the severing of certain brain fibers by means of an instrument inserted upward over the eye. It's medical name is ‘‘transor bital lobotomy.” The object is to cut the pathway of stimuli affecting emotions, thereby easing inner tensions which cause mental unbalance. A Swiss doctor was the first to perform surgery of this nature, 65 years ago, but the operation has been relatively rare until re cent years. Dr. Walter Freeman of Washing ton, D. C., neuro-psychiatrist, pi oneered in the work in this coun try. He first performed such op erations in West Virginia mental hospitals beginning in 1949 — a series from which Dr. Powell draws his conclusions. Since 1952 some 700 to 800 additional opera tions have been performed in the state, including one group of 228 in a 12-day period in 1952. Powell quotes several authori ties on the results of the opera tion in other states. One said: ‘‘Always there is some mental deterioration, x x some times so severe that the patient is left at the level of a zombie.” Another said: ‘‘An elderly pa tient made a marked improve ment in so far as his troublesome symptoms were concerned, but his personality settled into such a dull state that he could hardly a as the same individ ual. “A third patient, a housewife, was classified as ‘greatly im proved.’ She was able to leave the hospital and resume house work. But the patient, once a very discreet Sunday school teacher, used vulgar language in mixed company.” Still another quoted a relative of a patient who had undergone the operation, that ‘‘He has lost his soul.” This authority went on to say that ‘many lobotomy cases lose a sense of value of money ‘ x lose interest in everyday happen ings x x show no evidence of real happiness or real sorrow x x and in response to problems, they seem able to find only one solu tion.”” On the other hand, an observer of tobotomy patients at Delaware State Hospital said ‘‘the therapeu tic benefits can be dramatic in individual cases.” Another authority, reporting on a group of patients among whom 30 to 35 per cent were said to be improved, reminded that the re port could have meant only that “they were being cared for at home, instead of in the institu tion, or that ‘they could be moved from a back (violent) ward to a quiet ward,” after the opera tion. Powell said that of the 71 West Virginia patients investigated, 22 —or 32 per cent—were enabled to leave the hospital. Thirty-seven, or 52 per cent, showed the ‘‘same degree of improvement,” but re mained in the hospital for various reasons. On the basis of the five-year study, he questioned the saving to the state and the patient. Re ferring only to this “control group,’’ Powell added that the cost, in view of surgical expense and other factors, actually was more than it would have been with conservative methods of treat ment. “It may produce good results in carefully selected cases,” he said “but its indiscriminate use is in no way justified.”
Newspaper Details
Raleigh Register
Beckley, West Virginia, US
Tue, Sep 13, 1955
Page 12
Full Page
Clipped by
Cody C.
USA 07 Sep 2026
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