Significantly, the first lobotomy's failure did not shake the doctor's belief in the surgery as a means of behavioral control. Shortly after this note was written, the patient underwent a second lobotomy, underscoring the central importance that context played in determining when and how to care and treat a patient. Whether biologically or psychologically oriented, science and therapeutic practices are bounded by time, place, and culture and, as such, are periodically subject to reevaluation. These physicians were not unusually na ve nor unsympathetic towards their patients, but were, instead, caught within a particular historical, scientific, and clinical milieu that differs dramatically from our own. First, this history should encourage a sense of humility despite our scientific and therapeutic advances.
Every generation believes in their scientific evidence.
This history illustrates that clinical science evolves in ways that are not always predictable as witnessed by the awarding of two Nobel Prizes for interventions that later proved to have had little or no therapeutic value. Second, this history should encourage us to ask critical questions about contemporary science and therapies, since, if history is any guide, these too will be subject to revision. Asking historically informed questions of how we understand and care for chronic mental illness provides us with the opportunity to learn from , rahter than repeat, many of the errors of our predecessors.