Josef Hassid
Born in Poland in 1923, Josef Hassid was regarded by his fellow professional musicians as one of the greatest violinists of his day, and by some as one of the greatest of any day. Fellow musicians and reviewers of his performances described him and his playing with superlatives such as “incandescent” and “metaphysical”. By the end of the 1930s, as England was lurching towards war in Europe, he was performing regularly in London, including radio broadcasts from the BBC. He was subject to occasional lapses of memory during and after performances, which occasionally brought him criticism in written reviews.
Gerald Moore was a pianist and accompanist who was considered to be peerless by performing classical musicians. Moore performed with Hassid in London on several occasions, noting his occasional lapses of memory and during performances helping him through them. Years later Moore commented about Hassid during a 1973 interview, “Sadly he had an unhappy love affair which literally drove him mad.” By the summer of 1941, Hassid was experiencing severe and sometimes violent mood swings, and his previously observed memory lapses became worse as he often found himself unable to recognize friends.
His father, who at that point also managed his career, convinced Hassid to see a doctor, and the violinist was diagnosed with schizophrenia in late 1941. Hassid refused to cooperate with doctors and in the face of his belligerent attitude and behavior, he was admitted to an asylum in Northampton, where his treatment was determined by the staff with the approval of his father. Hassid was treated using both insulin shock treatments, which induced coma, and electroshock therapy. Both treatments induced convulsions in the patient which were believed by their doctors to be beneficial.
Whether the treatments were beneficial or not is a matter of conjecture, the doctors claimed he had improved and released him in May of 1942. In December he was declared to be insane and readmitted, first to a private asylum in Middlesex, later to Long Grove Hospital in 1943. He was still there when his father died in 1949, and has shown no improvement over the six years of his stay, his doctors decided to perform a prefrontal lobotomy on the violinist in the autumn of 1950.
Hassid developed an abscess which degenerated into an infection which in turn led to his developing meningitis following the operation, which in England was known as leucotomy, but was the same procedure as that called in America a lobotomy. Hassid never recovered from the operation and the ensuing illness and died in November of 1950.