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Last Resort
Psychosurgery and the Limits of Medicine

This book, first published in 1998, revisits the period in the 1940s and 1950s when many Americans were operated on for mental illness.

Jack D. Pressman (Author)

9780521353717, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 February 1998

576 pages, 47 b/w illus. 5 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.2 cm, 0.94 kg

'It is impeccably researched, and Pressman has an ear for the telling quotation: and it transcends One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest caricatures to offer a balanced counter to the anti-psychiatry onslaught, seeking to understand the psycho-surgeon without providing an apologia for them.' Roy Porter, The Times Higher Education Supplement

During the 1940s and 1950s, tens of thousands of Americans underwent some form of psychosurgery; that is, their brains were operated upon for the putative purpose of treating mental illness. From today's perspective, such medical practices appear foolhardy at best, perhaps even barbaric; most commentators thus have seen in the story of lobotomy an important warning about the kinds of hazards that society will face whenever incompetent or malicious physicians are allowed to overstep the boundaries of valid medical science. Last Resort, first published in 1998, challenges the previously accepted psychosurgery story and raises new questions about what we should consider its important lessons.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Psychiatry's renaissance
2. Sufficient promise
3. Certain benefit
4. Active treatment
5. Human salvage
6. Localized decisions
7. The politics of precision
8. Medicine controlled
Epilogue and conclusion
Appendix.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX]

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