The Wall Street Journal has posted the latest article in its extensive investigation into the US Veterans Administration’s lobotomy program of the 1950s and 60s. This article explores the life of war nurse Dorothy Ludden, and the impacts her lobotomy has had on her and her family.
“When Paul Ludden visits his mother in the nursing home, he sits on her bed and sings with her. Dorothy, 94 years old, remembers words to 1940s ditties. But she struggles to find memories of her days as a Navy nurse during World War II,” reports WSJ. “When she grows quiet, Paul strokes her gray head, passing fingers over divots in her skull—tangible reminders that the war left his mother with profound mental illness and that government doctors treated her by cutting into her brain and giving her a lobotomy.”
Links to the earlier WSJ articles are also included.
Scarred Memory: A World War II Nurse’s VA Lobotomy Takes Toll on Family She Raised (Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2015)