Notable Cases
- Rosemary Kennedy, sister of President John F. Kennedy, underwent a lobotomy in 1941 at age 23 which left her permanently incapacitated.
- Howard Dully wrote a memoir of his late-life discovery that he had been lobotomized in 1960 at age 12.
- New Zealand author and poet Janet Frame received a literary award in 1951 the day before a scheduled lobotomy was to take place, and it was never performed.
- Canadian singer Alys Robi underwent a lobotomy and later resumed singing professionally.
- Swedish modernist painter Sigrid Hjertén died following a lobotomy in 1948.
- American Playwright Tennessee Williams's older sister Rose received a lobotomy which left her incapacitated for life; the episode is said to have inspired characters and motifs in certain of his works.
It is often said that when an iron rod was accidentally driven through the head of Phineas Gage in 1848, this constituted an "accidental lobotomy", or that this event somehow inspired the development of surgical lobotomy a century later. According to the only book-length study of Gage, careful inquiry turns up no such link.
Read more about this topic: Lobotomy
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