Rosemary Kennedy and Lobotomy

Rosemary Kennedy (September 13, 1918 – January 7, 2005) was the younger sister of famous U.S. president John F. Kennedy. She was born in September 13, 1918, a year after her brother John. Rosemary Kennedy was the third child and first daughter of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Elizabeth Kennedy.

To resist her violent nature she underwent a lobotomy at the age of 23, after which she was mentally incapacitated for the rest of her life and died on January 7, 2005, at the age of 86.

She was commonly known as Rosemary and to her family and friends she was Rosie. Reportedly she was a shy child and her I.Q. referred a sign of moderate mental retardation. But when she gradually matured she became increasingly assertive, she was reportedly subject to violent mood swings and used to sneak out at night. To help calm her down of her violent mood swings which was found to be difficult to handle at home, her father gave permission for lobotomy, which was a cutting age procedure to calm down patient like Rosemary.

Lobotomy was performed by Dr. Walter Freeman, the director of the laboratories at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., together with his partner, James W. Watts, MD, from the University of Virginia. But unfortunately it was a failure, and instead of producing the hoped-for result, however, the lobotomy reduced Rosemary to an infantile mentality that left her incontinent and staring blankly at walls for hours. Her verbal skills were reduced to unintelligible babble.

However, Publicly, she was declared to be mentally handicapped, as that was more socially acceptable in a political family than a failed lobotomy.

Rosemary died from natural causes on January 7, 2005, at the Fort Memorial Hospital in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, at the age of 86, with two of her surviving sisters Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Jean Kennedy Smith, and her only surviving brother Senator Ted Kennedy by her side.

Lobotomy treatments are now abandoned and discredited by the mental health and medical communities due to it’s sever side effects, the procedure is totally rejected by the modern medical practitioners and is no longer used.