Patient Cases

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Sallie Ellen Ionesco before lobotomy

Lobotomy that Helped

At the time of her lobotomy, Sallie Ellen Ionesco was a 29 year-old housewife and mother who was described as severely depressed and violently suicidal. Ionesco was the very first person to have a lobotomy with the ice pick, and it was a very successful procedure. The family considered the operation a success and a blessed relief. Ionesco lost some memory function but was relatively intact and led a fairly normal life after the lobotomy procedure.

Her daughter, Angelene Forester, called her mother, "absolutely violently suicidal beforehand." She said, "After the trans-orbital lobotomy there was nothing… it stopped immediately.  It was just peace.  I don’t know how to explain it to you, it was like turning a coin over. That quick. So whatever he did, he did something right."

Forester also brought up a good controversial thought when she stated, "It’s a hard decision to make, but inevitably life is just full of decisions like that… For me it was a good thing. I think for mama it was a good thing. And I think the lobotomy he did on her was a very good thing. Of course now they have medicine for this, so it’s all a moot point. But they had nothing back then. That’s the thing, people who are looking at it don’t understand, they didn’t have anything else and nobody was coming up with anything."

Sallie Ellen Ionesco after lobotomy

Rosemary Kennedy before lobotomy

Lobotomy that Harmed

Rose Marie "Rosemary" Kennedy, sister to John F Kennedy, was born on September 13, 1918. She was said to have some small degree of mental disabilities. Kennedy was slower to crawl, slower to walk, and slower to talk than all her other siblings. The learning disability continued throughout her school years. 

Kennedy was described as a shy and easygoing child, but in her teenage years, she became rebellious and moody. Kennedy's family was well aware of her behavior, and her sister Eunice once wrote, "Rosemary was not making progress but seemed instead to be going backward." Later, Eunice wrote, "At 22, she was becoming increasingly irritable and difficult."  Her father also noticed she had developed an embarrassing attraction to boys, and he did not approve. In 1941, when Kennedy was 23, her father Joseph Kennedy was told by her doctors that a new operation would help calm her mood swings that the family found difficult to handle at home (lobotomy). 

Joseph authorized the procedure without notifying the rest of the Kennedy family. The lobotomy procedure was unsuccessful, and left Kennedy with an infant like mentality. She would stare blankly at walls for hours, could not control some bodily functions, and her verbal skills were reduced to an unintelligible babble. Due to the unsuccessful lobotomy, Kennedy was moved to an institution where she lived until she died on January 7, 2005 at the age of 86.

Rosemary Kennedy after lobotomy