I'd rather have a bottle in front of me....

One of my favorite blogs, Boing Boing, linked to a post on the Neurophilosophy blog about lobotomies. The discussion of the "icepick lobotomy" is particularly fun:

Freeman was unhappy with the new procedure. He considered it to be both time-consuming and messy, and so developed a quicker method, the so-called 'ice-pick' lobotomy, which he performed for the first time on January 17th, 1945.

With the patient rendered unconscious by electroshock, an instrument was inserted above the eyeball through the orbit using a hammer. Once inside the brain, the instrument was moved back and forth; this was then repeated on the other side.

My favorite part:

Freeman's new technique could be performed in about 10 minutes. Because it did not require anaesthesia, it could be performed outside of the clinical setting, and lobotomized patients did not need hospital internment afterwards. Thus, Freeman often performed lobotomies in his Washington D.C. office...

That's what makes DC such a great city -- lobotomies on demand. I wonder if my health insurance covers it.

Combining electroshock and an ice pick to the brain -- now that's science.