Walter Freeman (surgeon)

Infobox Medical Person
name = Walter Jackson Freeman II


box_width =
image_width =
caption =
birth_date = November 14, 1895
birth_place = Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
death_date = death date and age|1972|05|31|1895|11|14
death_place =
profession = physician, psychiatrist
specialism = psychosurgery, neurology
research_field =
known_for = Popularizing the lobotomy
Invention of the "ice pick" lobotomy
years_active =
education = Yale University
University of Pennsylvania Medical School
work_institutions =
prizes =
relations =

Dr. Walter Jackson Freeman II (November 14, 1895 – May 31, 1972) was an American physician. He is mainly remembered as a prolific lobotomist [ [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lobotomist/program/ American Experience | The Lobotomist | PBS ] ] and an advocate of psychosurgery.

Freeman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania into an affluent and distinguished family. His father was a successful doctor and his grandfather, William Keen, was President of the American Medical Association. He graduated from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.

Career

Freeman performed nearly 3500 lobotomies in 23 states, mostly based on scanty and flimsy evidence for its scientific basis [http://student.bmj.com/issues/06/01/education/12.php S Abimbola, The white cut: Egas Moniz, lobotomy, and the Nobel prize, British Medical Journal] [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5014080 My Lobotomy': Howard Dully's Journey] ] , but more significantly he popularized the lobotomy as a legitimate form of psychosurgery. A neurologist without surgical training, he initially worked with several surgeons, including James W. Watts. In 1936, he and Watts became the first American doctors to perform prefrontal lobotomy (by craniotomy in an operating room).

Frustrated by his lack of surgical training and seeking a faster and less invasive way to perform the procedure, Freeman invented the "ice pick" or lobotomy, which, at first, literally used an ice pick hammered through the back of the eye socket into the brain. Freeman was able to perform these very quickly, outside of an operating room, and without a surgeon. For his first transorbital lobotomies, Freeman used an actual icepick from his kitchen. Later, he utilized an instrument created specifically for the operation called a leucotome. In 1948 Freeman developed a new technique which involved wrenching the leucotome in an upstroke after the initial insertion. This procedure placed great strain on the instrument and in one case resulted in the leucotome breaking off in the patient's skull. As a result, Freeman designed a new, stronger instrument, the orbitoclast.

Freeman embarked on a national campaign in his van which he called his "lobotomobile" to demonstrate the procedure to doctors working at state-run institutions; Freeman would show off by icepicking both of a patient's eyesockets at one time - one with each hand. According to some, institutional care was hampered by lack of effective treatments and extreme overcrowding, and Freeman saw the transorbital lobotomy as an expedient tool to get large populations out of treatment and back into private life.

The “ice pick lobotomy” was, according to Ole Enersen, performed by Freeman “with a recklessness bordering on lunacy, touring the country like a travelling evangelist. In most cases,” Enersen continued, “this procedure was nothing more than a gross and unwarranted mutilation carried out by a self righteous zealot.” [ [http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/454.html Enersen OD. Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz.] ]

Freeman's most notorious operation was on the ill-fated Rosemary Kennedy, who was permanently incapacitated by a lobotomy at age 23. Another of his patients, Howard Dully has now written a book called "My Lobotomy" about his experiences with Freeman and his long recovery after the surgery. [cite book
date = March 6, 2008
title = My Lobotomy
last = Dully
first = Howard
publisher = Ebury Press
id = ISBN 9780091922122 ]

With the advent of antipsychotic drugs, notably Thorazine, in the mid-1950s, lobotomy fell out of favor as a treatment, and Freeman saw his reputation crumble quickly. He continued to drive cross country in his "lobotomobile" to visit his former patients until his death from cancer in 1972.

Frances Farmer legend

The urban legend that Freeman operated on actress Frances Farmer has been conclusively disproven: the author who initially alleged this admitted in a court proceeding that he had made it up [ [http://jeffreykauffman.net/francesfarmer/sheddinglight.html Shedding Light on Shadowland] ] , Farmer's medical records show she was never operated on while institutionalized, and Freeman biographer Jack El-Hai ("The Lobotomist"), who had access to Freeman's patient records, found no reference to Farmer whatsoever.

ee also

*Athens Lunatic Asylum (Freeman's employer during some of his early surgeries)
*Lobotomy

References

Citations

Other sources

*El-Hai, Jack (2005), "The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness"; Wiley.

External links

* [http://thelobotomist.com The Lobotomist, authoritative biography of Freeman by Jack El-Hai]
* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lobotomist/more/index.html PBS 'The Lobotomist' program aired 2008-01-21] View this hour long program on PBS web site.
* [http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=81431135 Freeman Bio/Blog]
* [http://www.psychosurgery.org Psychosurgery.org]
* [http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/353/2/119 New England Journal of Medicine article]
* [http://www.mcmanweb.com/article-122.htm Article referencing Jack El-Hai's initial Washington Post feature on Freeman]
* [http://www.23nlpeople.com/schizophrenia/lobotomy.html A Brief History of Lobotomy]
* [http://www.soundportraits.org/on-air/my_lobotomy/ 'My Lobotomy' documentary program from SoundPortraits.org. "]
* [http://jeffreykauffman.net/francesfarmer/sheddinglight.html "Shedding Light on Shadowland"] --in-depth essay debunking the lobotomy allegation about Frances Farmer, including a wealth of information from Freeman's own private correspondence