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Motivated by the tragedy of wasted lives in mental hospitals, he introduced insulin shock therapy and ECT for patients at George Washington University Hospital in Washington DC, where he served on the faculty. Although his theories have been discredited, Freeman was one of the few psychiatrists of his era who believed that mental illness had a physical biological component.įreeman attended Yale and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, then studied neurology and psychiatry in Europe. Freeman believed lobotomies worked because the procedure severed connections between the frontal lobes of the brain and the thalamus, thought to be the seat of human emotion, which the mentally ill apparently had in overabundance. In all, lobotomies were used on 40,000 to 50,000 Americans between 1936 and the late 1950s. At AMA meetings, he set up graphic exhibits and used hand-held clackers to draw audiences. Then he repeated the process with the other eye socket.įreeman kept records of 3,439 lobotomies he performed over his long career, and he promoted the procedure to more than 55 hospitals in 23 states. Freeman took a position behind the patient's head, pushed the leucotome about an inch and a half into the frontal lobe of the patient's brain, and moved the sharp tip back and forth. A few taps with a surgical hammer breached the bone. Walter Freeman lifted the patient's eyelid and inserted an ice pick-like instrument called a leucotome through a tear duct.
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Sample this lurid paragraph for starters: THE FIELD OF MENTAL HEALTH suffers no shortage of weird and offbeat and arguably despicable characters, but the Washington Post back in the early 2000s outdid itself for its story on Walter Freeman, father of the lobotomy.