Rosemary Kennedy's disastrous lobotomy, 1941
Rosemary Kennedy's disastrous lobotomy, 1941
Sister to President JFK, Rosemary Kennedy is a dark secret of the Kennedy family.
Born in 1918, Rosemary entered a life of wealth and luxury as her father. Joseph Kennedy, was a powerful and accomplished businessman. Not much is known about her early years, but she was described as vibrant and intelligent.
However at some point in her early adult years, she began to experience seizures and outbursts that would often turn violent. She was sent to a boarding school which was ran by nuns. Kennedy would escape during the night and it is thought she went out to have sex with men, which the nuns reported back to her father.
Her erratic behavior at the age of 23 led to her father consulting two doctors, James W. Watts and Walter Freeman and they organized for Rosemary to have a lobotomy, which is a psychosurgery....
This is what Dr Watts recalled during the procedure:
"We went through the top of the head," Dr. Watts recalled. "I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch." The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. "We put an instrument inside", he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman asked Rosemary some questions. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backward... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded."
Rosemary could not walk or talk after the surgery and had the mental capacity of a 2 year old child. It is likely she had bipolar disorder or depression before the operation. She could not hold her urine and did not understand the concept of using a toilet. She spent the next 20 years in psych wards and was reunited with her family after her fathers' death. She never recovered.
Her mental state was covered up by the Kennedy family as mental disabilities from a young age and her lobotomy did not become public until 1987. Rosemary Kennedy died in 2005 aged 86.
Photographer: unknown
Source: BBC
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