Psychosurgery at the Warneford Hospital - A Collaboration with Oxfordshire Health Archives

By Lucy Barrell

In January 2025 Oxfordshire Health Archives, in collaboration with the Warneford Hospital bicentenary project, was awarded funding from Oxford Health Histories to list previously uncatalogued material of the successive administrative bodies of the Warneford (1948 – present) and undertake research on the period focusing on common themes including:

• Treatment and Research
• Staff and Patients
• Comparisons with Littlemore Hospital
• Management of the Hospital
• Rehabilitation and Continuing Care

The minutes of the Warneford and Park Hospital Management Committee (1948 – 1968) proved to be particularly detailed and interesting – a true projection of hospital life and medical developments. When first taking on the project, I had limited knowledge on physical therapies that were mostly utilised during the 1930s – 1960s but soon discovered more regarding this interventional and experimental chapter of psychiatry, not necessarily to the benefit of the patient.

Psychosurgery, also referred to as Leucotomy or Prefrontal Lobotomy, a surgical procedure in which the neural connections to and from the prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobes of the brain were severed, was first recorded in the Warneford Hospital Annual Report in 1945. A room at the hospital was converted into an operating theatre and associated annexes and the services of Wylie McKissock, Britain’s most prolific Lobotomist, were employed. By 1947, a partnership had been forged with Sir Hugh Cairns of the Nuffield Department of Neurosurgery who trialled a less invasive method, cingulotomy. 30 patients were treated in total between the period of 1945 – 1947, cases were selected in those who had chronic agitation in conjunction with obsessionism and schizophrenia. A handful of patient cases are recorded in the minutes between 1947 and 1950. We know little of the long-term impact to the patients other than they were admitted for procedure and recovery for approximately 6 months to 1 year before being discharged declared cured. Dr Seymour Spencer, former Consultant Psychiatrist at the Warneford recounted:

A classic leucotomy generally reduced tension and made the patient comfortable and pliable; but it also severely reduced personal warmth, energy and interest. Some people characterised leucotomised patients as zombies. It caused relatives to say: “he is happier now; we were happier then.”

Acc 537 Memories of Dr Seymour Spencer from the Gazette,

23 Oct 2006

In 1958 it is understand that Dr Skottowe attended a symposium on Leucotomy – this is the last reference in the archives to the procedure. It can be assumed that in line with general medical trends, from the 1950s and 1960s physical therapies were abandoned in favour of newly discovered psychiatric drugs and other forms of psychoanalytical treatments.

The Warneford Hospital appears to have been on the one hand enamoured, like many psychiatric institutions at the time, but also rightly preferring to take a “conservative” approach to such treatment. They emphasised in the 1947 annual report that the bed rock of their work remained in “the personal psychiatric understanding of the patient… psychological investigation and help, social readjustment and a gradual resumption of function through therapeutic operation.”

Contextually, leucotomies were developed in the post war era – a period of united stress and trauma. The 1940s marked a turning point in the understanding and treatment of mental health. Like the preceding war, World War II had thrust psychological trauma into the spotlight, forcing society to confront the reality of mental illness on a mass scale. As soldiers returned home with invisible wounds, families and communities grappled with the challenges of supporting their loved ones. Meanwhile, the field of psychiatry was undergoing its own revolution, with new theories and treatments emerging at a rapid pace, based on the belief that mental illness had a physical basis in the nervous system or the brain. These fields of thought and treatments were accelerated by the pressing need to address overcrowding in mental hospitals and to counter negative stereotypes of mental illness perpetuated through the press by searching for cures, with a genuine desire by those in the psychiatric fields to help those suffering. Even if this was misplaced, it is important to understand the context behind why such movements occurred in mental health treatments.

As the research project has drawn to a close, the themes and insight gathered from the archives will prove invaluable in our background understanding to the post war period of the Warneford Hospital and help us in providing historical information for the outreach activities and exhibitions planned for the upcoming Warneford 200 celebrations next year. We additionally hope the research undertaken will encourage further study of the archive material - a follow up research project is being planned to focus on the long-term implications for patients mentioned in the Warneford and Park Hospital Management Committee minutes who underwent leucotomy operations, which will of course follow data protection legislation.  

To find out more about the collections held at Oxfordshire Health Archives, please see the details below.

Oxfordshire Health Archives

Oxfordshire History Centre

St Luke’s Church

Temple Road

Cowley

Oxford

OX4 2HT

archives@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk        http://www.oxfordshirehealtharchives.nhs.uk/