 Clifford Allen questioned the ethics of operating on people to make them easier to nurse and said it was little less than criminal to operate on people who were mildly or only recently ill.

Several works published in the 1950s drew attention to the damaging and sometimes fatal effects of psychosurgery, though their authors were not opposed to the treatment.Maurice Partridge's follow-up of 300 patients operated on by McKissock revealed a higher death rate than was usually acknowledged, with six per cent of patients dying wholly or partly as a result of the surgery.The book described how many patients, even those whose surgery was considered as success by their doctors, were left with serious disabilities.