The other day, I did a quick post about Dr. Walter Freeman’s before and after photos of his “successful” lobotomist patients, and one of our readers shared a link to PBS’ episode of American Experience called “The Lobotomist”. It details the career of Dr. Freeman, his research and practice, and his development of transorbital lobotomy. It is amazing and horrifying, and terrifying that the medical community both accepted and praised his practice of hammering an icepick – his son recalls that the first transorbital lobotomy tools came from their kitchen drawers – through a mental patient’s eye sockets, sometimes without anesthesia. No permission was required, from patient or nursing staff, and he did procedure after procedure, up to 25 in one day. Fellow doctors who were invited to observe were known to faint or vomit when they first watched the procedure. In one instance, he was called to a police incident where a man had barricaded himself and his wife in his house, threatening murder-suicide. After entering the house, Dr. Freeman had the man held down while he lobotomized him, right then and there. It went from a last case scenario to a “magical cure,” even having state-sponsored “lobotomy drives”. Of course, the lobotomy eventually fell out of favor, but the alternative is almost as, or more, horrifying – the “chemical lobotomy”; drugs that were developed and peddled as answers to the lobotomy, but without the surgery (and with more long-term profit?). Check out “The Lobotomist” below…be prepared for a constant state of queasiness when you watch this…
