The 1975 film, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” directed the public’s attention to a 1930s-era procedure termed lobotomy: a brain-altering intervention described by one of its leading proponents, Dr. Walter Freeman, as “soul surgery.” Lobotomies were performed on thousands of American adults, and some children, well into the 1980s before being somewhat (but not entirely) retired.