The silence in the record on this point is itself a kind of answer. The procedure was not performed with Rosemary’s participation or understanding as a concern. She was managed.
The Physical Consequences in Detail
The immediate physical consequences of the lobotomy are described across multiple sources with enough consistency to allow a reasonably clear picture, though the precise sequence of recovery and the long-term trajectory of Rosemary’s physical functioning are documented more sparsely.
In the days and weeks immediately following the surgery, Rosemary regressed dramatically. The phrase “mental capacity of a toddler” appears in multiple sources, drawn from a TIME magazine characterization that was itself reported by other publications. This phrase, while evocative, is a simplification of a complex neurological situation rather than a precise clinical description. What the accounts agree on is that she lost the ability to walk, lost the ability to speak clearly, and was incontinent — that the functioning she had demonstrated before the surgery was largely or entirely gone.
She was placed at Craig House, the private psychiatric facility in Beacon, New York. Craig House offered the kind of upscale private care that wealthy families sought when they needed a relative managed discreetly. It was not a facility for people with intellectual disabilities specifically; it was a general private psychiatric facility that also housed other notable patients, including Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who had been treated there for schizophrenia in the 1930s. The population at Craig House was defined by the families’ ability to pay rather than by the clinical characteristics of the patients.