>>>When I was 19 I worked in a nursing home for a summer. There was a patient who had a labotomy a few years previous because he was extremely violent. His options were the labotomy or a mental hospital. After the labotomy he was calmer but also somewhat mentally challenged. He was prone to fits of temper and foul language and couldn't carry on a conversation.
>>>
>>>Two sides of the coin:
>>>
>>>http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=199
>>>http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/articles/moniz/index.html
>>>
>>
>>Yep, confirms my theory. Lobotomies may result in an increase in Democrats!<s>
>
>Remind me -- a lobotomy is when part of the brain is removed, right? Who do people vote for when their whole brain is gone?
>
>Bada bing!

Actually, as i recall, it has to do with clipping a nerve or something. Here's what wikipedia says:

Freeman decided to access the frontal lobes through the eye sockets, instead of through drilled holes in the scalp. In 1945, he took an icepick from his own kitchen and began to test the new surgical technique on cadavers. The technique was called "transorbital lobotomy," and it involved lifting the upper eyelid and placing the point of a thin surgical instrument (often called a leucotome or orbitoclast) under the eyelid and against the top of the eyesocket. A hammer or mallet was then used to drive the leucotome through the thin layer of bone and into the brain. The leucotome was then moved from side to side, to sever the nerve fibers connecting the frontal lobes to the thalamus. In selected patients, the butt of the leucotome was pulled upward, sending the tip farther back into the brain and producing a "deep frontal cut," a more radical form of lobotomy. The leucotome was then withdrawn, and the procedure was repeated on the other side. Walter Freeman first performed a transorbital lobotomy on a live patient in 1946. This new form of psychosurgery was intended for use in State mental hospitals that often did not have the facilities for anesthesia, so Freeman suggested using electroconvulsive therapy to render the patient unconscious.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy

It was found to produce people who voted for Democrats, but that was too inhumane, so now they just keep them stoned on thorazine and haldol. Even so, they still vote for democrats.