"Nothing new under the Sun" and "history repeats itself" are common sayings, and they turn out to quite often be true. No wonder they have become sayings.
The history of medicine has always had huge episodes of malpractice, beliefs based on unfounded assumptions, and horrendous de facto human experiments done on patients, for pretty much as long as medicine has existed. The history of medicine is stock full of beliefs and practices, some of which were quirky and hilarious, other absolutely horrendous stuff of nightmare.
One of the more recent examples of this was the practice of lobotomies, which happened for the most part of the 20th century.
Considering how horrendous of an operation a lobotomy is, it may be a bit hard to imagine that, instead of it being considered an extremely drastic procedure to be used only as the utmost last resort when nothing else has worked, during the latter half of the 20th century some doctors prescribed them like candy, to "cure" the most trivial of things. Did you suffer from anxiety? Lobotomy. Difficulties concentrating? Lobotomy. Constant headaches? Lobotomy. Trouble sleeping? Lobotomy.
Most horrendously, these doctors prescribed the procedure like candy even to children. Was the child a bit restless or hyperactive? Lobotomy.
While not an extraordinarily common procedure overall, there were indeed certain doctors who were completely enamored with it, and prescribed it whenever they could. At least one doctor even boasted about the number of lobotomies he had performed, and organized demonstrations where he would lobotomize two patients at the same time. To him it seemed to be like a circus act.
And this went on for a surprisingly long time. The practice really kicked off in the 1930's, and it wasn't banned world-wide until the late 1970's (with a few surgeries still being performed in the early 1980's).
How come it was allowed to continue for so long?
Unsurprisingly, because the doctors who were advocating and prescribing lobotomies were extremely dishonest and deceptive about it.
As you might have guessed, when these doctors wrote publications with their results, they engaged in heavy-handed deception, bias and outright lying. Very typically they would engage in heavy selection bias, ie. they would only report on the cases that were (seemingly) successful and helpful, while completely ignoring the cases where the lobotomy caused horrendous irreversible damage.
Such horrendous irreversible damage included the person becoming so crippled that he or she couldn't even function and had to be hospitalized for life. Other damage included, unsurprisingly, death. Even in many of the "better" outcomes the person became intellectually (and often physically) crippled, being barely able to function in society.
Unsurprisingly, those formed the vast majority of the results. And, likewise unsurprisingly, those were the cases routinely ignored by these doctors in their reports. They only talked about the cases that were seemingly successful. And many times even in these cases the outcome wasn't actually so "successful" but the doctors only reported on the positive effects while being silent about the negative ones (such as the person becoming emotionally or intellectually crippled.)
These doctors did a huge amount of harm to literally thousands of people, and they did it deceptively by deliberately lying and omitting information in their reports (so most of these doctors couldn't even be given the benefit of the doubt by considering that perhaps they were just ignorant and didn't know better.)
No wonder the practice was banned worldwide by the late 1970's, when the actual results of the operation started becoming common knowledge.
But luckily we are over such barbaric practices that cripple people, done by doctors with agendas who will deliberately lie and distort results in their reports?
Well, consider what's currently happening with the so called "sex affirmation" surgeries (ie. castration). The similarities are eerie.
However, the latter is much scarier than lobotomies in that at the time criticizing lobotomies wasn't especially considered a bad thing and something to be shunned. Nobody was "cancelled" or physically assaulted because of criticizing the practice.
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