Frontal lobe transection (lobotomy) is a legitimate medical treatment that can cure severe mental illness and behavioural problems.
Lobotomies, performed from the 1930s through 1950s, caused severe cognitive damage, personality changes, and often left patients in vegetative states. The procedure was based on flawed understanding of brain function. By the 1960s, antipsychotic medications and improved psychiatric care replaced this practice. Today it is recognised as one of medicine's darkest chapters, and surviving patients suffered permanent disability.