#24: Medical Malpractice
Here’s a really dark chapter in medical history. There was a time when medical practitioners thought that a good treatment for certain mental conditions was to do surgery to physically break the connection between the frontal cortex and other parts of the brain, which they thought would disrupt stimuli that were causing abnormal behaviors.
And to be fair, it often did result in calmer patients, but in a really horrifying way that messed people up for life—if they survived. Equally horrifying is that the neurologist who came up with the procedure got a Nobel Prize for it. Tens of thousands of people were subjected to it in the US alone. I don’t even have something half funny to say here. It’s just horrible.