Lobotomy: A Lost Era of Treatment (One of the darkest and most controversial periods in medicine.) Prefrontal lobotomy was a psychosurgical procedure performed by surgically severing or scraping away brain tissue. It became popular in the late 1930s and was used until the late 1950s to treat schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, and other severe mental illnesses. American neurologist Walter Freeman popularized the procedure, particularly with a method he called “transorbital lobotomy,” whic

The Brain Surgery That Turned Adults Into Children