otwithstanding the image portrayed in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest that most patients went on to lead productive lives after lobotomy. Braslow adds that if the medical community actually saw a large number of patients who were virtually catatonic following the procedure that doctors would refuse to perform it. Braslow reminds readers that the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz received the Nobel Prize in 1949 in medicine and physiology for developing the techniques used in medical lobotomies. By 1950, the surgery was performed in 286 hospitals in the United States. By 1951, an estimated 18,000 patients had undergone the operation in the United States alone (Braslow, 293).
Melinda Beck and Geoffrey Cowley in Newsweek would probably describe Doctor Braslow's view of the ethics of current treatment protocols for mental illness as charitable. For example
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