Forgotten Soldiers...

Forgotten Soldiers...  The Wall Street Journal has published the first installment of a heartbreaking story about some 2,000 soldiers – veterans of WWII – who were lobotomized as a form of mental health treatment.  A few of these veterans are still alive, like Roman Tritz at right in a photo from before WWII.  The first installment tells the stories of several of these men.

It's easy to condemn the lobotomies with 20/20 hindsight and today's vastly superior knowledge and treatment options.  In the context of the times in which they happened, though, the lobotomies were, the doctors agreed, the least bad alternative.

I have no idea how and why The Wall Street Journal came to support this reporting and writing, but I'm very glad they did.  I'm used to seeing history works of this depth in book form, not serialized in a newspaper (or more correctly, in my case, on a web site).  I hope we see more of this...