Wikipedia: Lobotomy

Lobotomy ( Greek : λοβός lobos “ lobe (of brain )”; τομή tomē “cut, slice”) is a neurosurgical procedure, a form of psychosurgery , also known as a leukotomy or leucotomy (from the Greek λευκός leukos “clear, white” and tomē ). It consists of cutting or scraping away most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex , the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain.

Some patients were noted to have experienced symptomatic improvement with the operation, but this often came at a cost, creating other impairments.

The use of the procedure increased dramatically from the early 1940s and into the 1950s; by 1951, almost 20,000 lobotomies had been performed in the United States alone (Wikipedia)

“…but she made no complaints.”

The purpose of the operation was to reduce the symptoms of mental disorder, and it was recognized that this was accomplished at the expense of a person’s personality and intellect. British psychiatrist Maurice Partridge, who conducted a follow-up study of 300 patients, said that the treatment achieved its effects by “reducing the complexity of psychic life”. Following the operation, spontaneity, responsiveness, self-awareness and self-control were reduced. Activity was replaced by inertia, and people were left emotionally blunted and restricted in their intellectual range (Wikipedia).

The Strange and Curious History of Lobotomy - BBC

The idea behind lobotomy was different. The Portuguese neurologist, Egas Moniz, believed that patients with obsessive behaviour were suffering from fixed circuits in the brain.

In 1935, in a Lisbon hospital, he believed he had found a solution. “I decided to sever the connecting fibres of the neurons in activity,” he wrote in a monograph titled How I Came to Perform Frontal Leucotomy.

[…]

Moniz reported dramatic improvements for his first 20 patients. The operation was seized on with enthusiasm by the American neurologist Walter Freeman who became an evangelist for the procedure, performing the first lobotomy in the US in 1936, then spreading it across the globe (BBC).