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Early Mental Illnesses

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Early Treatments for Mental Illnesses
In the past two decades, we have made magnificent medical achievements. Thanks to technological advancements and better understanding of the human anatomy, the medical field has overcome issues we once believed we would never imagine overcoming. From sanitation, to understanding the human anatomy, even becoming more advanced in procedures. For example, one of the more important categories we have advanced in would be mental illnesses. Just 20 years ago, we were performing cruel, inhumane procedures on mental patients because we were not fully understanding how to treat them. We now know and understand 200 different mental illnesses, and how to treat them, without causing pain or risking death. Using medication, …show more content…
Often, he was seen as either a medical angel or a medical monster. He had always been curious as to what part of the brain caused mental illnesses such as; depression, schizophrenia, etc. So, in order to become the first American neuroscientist, Freeman studied the works of Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt, who was the first to perform an attempt at human psychosurgery. Then, on November 12, 1935, a new psychosurgery procedure was performed in Portugal under the direction of the neurologist and physician Egas Moniz His new "leucotomy" procedure, intended to treat mental illness, took small coring's of the patient's frontal lobes. Moniz became a mentor and idol for Freeman who modified the procedure renaming it the "lobotomy". Instead of taking coring's from the frontal lobes, Freeman's procedure severed the connection between the frontal lobes and the thalamus. Because Freeman lost his license to perform surgery himself after his last patient died on the operating table, he enlisted neurosurgeon James Watts as a research partner. Together, Freeman and Watts performed as many as 3,439 lobotomies in four decades, 2,500 of which used his ice pick method. In 1967, Freeman performed his last lobotomy before being banned from operating. After he performed the third lobotomy on a longtime patient of his, she developed a brain hemorrhage and passed …show more content…
The practice of bloodletting began around 3000 years ago with the Egyptians, then continued with the Greeks and Romans, the Arabs and Asians, then spread through Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It reached its peak in Europe in the 19th century but subsequently declined. Today, bloodletting is only used for selective diseases. Commonly. Bloodletting was used to treat mental illnesses, and believed to release any impurities from the body. There were different forms of bloodletting used, although venesection was most commonly

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