Woutie en sy vrinne is mense wat ons graag vergas oor die wondere van die wetenskap, net effe selektief, ek lees toevallig op die BBC se blad van nog ’n wonder van die wetenskap, die lobotomie:
It's 75 years since the first lobotomy was performed in the US, a procedure later described by one psychiatrist as "putting in a brain needle and stirring the works". So how did it come to be regarded as a miracle cure?
Deep in the archives of London's Wellcome Collection, that great treasure trove of medical curiosities, is a small white cardboard box.
Inside is a pair of medical devices. They are simple. Each consists of an eight-centimetre steel spike, attached to a wooden handle.
"These two gruesome things are lobotomy instruments. Nothing sophisticated," says senior archivist Lesley Hall. "It's not rocket science is it?"
These spikes once represented the leading edge of psychiatric science. They were the operative tools in lobotomy, also known as leucotomy, an operation which was seen as a miracle cure for a range of mental illnesses.
Grillerig huh, maar dit word beter, ons lees ook:
Surgeons would drill a pair of holes into the skull, either at the side or top, and push a sharp instrument – a leucotome – into the brain.
The surgeon would sweep this from side to side, to cut the connections between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain.
In 1949, Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize for inventing lobotomy, and the operation peaked in popularity around the same time.
But from the mid-1950s, it rapidly fell out of favour, partly because of poor results and partly because of the introduction of the first wave of effective psychiatric drugs.
"They had been lobectimised 30-40 years ago, they were chronic schizophrenics and they were often the ones were some of the most apathetic, slow, knocked-off patients," he says.
Mr Marsh, who is now one of Britain's most eminent neurosurgeons, says the operation was simply bad science. "It reflected very bad medicine, bad science, because it was clear the patients who were subjected to this procedure were never followed up properly."
"If you saw the patient after the operation they'd seem alright, they'd walk and talk and say thank you doctor," he observes. "The fact they were totally ruined as social human beings probably didn't count."
Nobel huh!!
Dem, dit plaas bietjie perspektief op die Nobel, om nie eens van die wonderlike wetenskap nie ... enige kommentaar, enige iemand???
Francois Williams