Lobotomies used to be a horrific way that doctors tried to treat patients with mental illness. Different doctors performed lobotomies differently, but one of the primary approaches was to drill a hole in the side of the skull to access the brain. Doctors thought that severing certain connections in the brain could help treat mental illness. By the 1950s, lobotomies were on their way out, but not before doctors performed over 40,000 of them in the US alone. A drill, shown on the right, is cranked by hand to help doctors access the patient's brain.

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