Medicine: A Question of Initiative

One of the most hotly debated questions in psychiatric circles is how much harm, as well as good, is done to mental patients by prefrontal lobotomy—an operation inside the skull which cuts the lines of communication between some of the parts of the brain which govern social behavior. Now a closely related issue is to be threshed out in the courts: Does a normal, sane man suffer irreparable injury when such an operation is performed?

One night last February, Coley B. Chapman, 26, a Negro laborer for the Long Island Rail Road, was waiting for a train in Washington's Union Station when...

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