Word: braining
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...over the U.S., surgeons were cutting nerves in various parts of the body in the hope of relieving ulcers, hand sweating, high blood pressure, hiccups, drug addiction, schizophrenia. One hospital last week was booked solid for the next nine months with appointments for lobotomies (cutting nerves in the brain). There were similar waiting lists elsewhere, and many doctors were getting nervous about the whole subject. They asked: Has the nerve-cutting fad already gone too far; will people who are now getting their nerves cut some day wish they hadn...
Lobotomy, a close second in popularity, is a tension-relieving brain operation (TIME, Dec. 23). More than 3,000 U.S. citizens have already had pre-frontal lobotomies, and the current rate is some 500 a year. The operation slices through a section of the frontal lobe, and is supposed to break up the disturbing mental patterns that have unbalanced the patient. In six out of ten cases lobotomy seems to be successful. But one patient in ten is relaxed too much by the operation; three in ten remain tense. Psychiatrists recommend the operation only for otherwise incurable psychotics...
...thrombus grows, may eventually let loose daughter clots (emboli) which swim on to lodge at vital bottlenecks in the blood stream. A thrombus which lodges in a coronary (heart) artery, blocking off the blood supply to the heart muscle, can kill within a few minutes; a clot in the brain causes a stroke...
...where] your writing-desk with its blank paper and . . . other implements will appear as a chain of flowers." So Author Read obediently took a job in the Treasury-and quickly discovered that "dear Coleridge" had been talking through his hat. Nonetheless, every night for years Read fought his tired brain, turned out poems and essays. Finally, he found a more congenial job as a curator of ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum...
...Evelyn Webber of the London Evening Standard how it felt to be a vicarious terrorist. As the Standard reported it: "I just talk. Arouse and excite the reader, and make him fighting mad. . . . Writing propaganda is like falling in love with yourself and the veiled wonders in your own brain. While I write I grow mystic. A feeling of great power comes over...