Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2334

WALTER JACKSON FREEMAN (1895-1972) Psychosurgery; intelligence, emotion and social behavior following prefrontal lobotomy for mental disorders. Charles C. Thomas 1942 xii, 337 [2] pp., illus., tables, diagrs. 25.4 cm.

Lobotomy was a popular therapy for certain mental disorders from the mid-thirties until the mid-fifties when opposition from within the medical community, the development of stereotactic instruments, and the advent of tranquilizers brought an end to its use as a major therapeutic alternative. Moniz (see No. 2299) is generally acknowledged to be the individual who developed psychosurgery when he performed the first prefrontal leucotomy in 1935. He was very optimistic about the results and felt that it was a safe, simple operation and an excellent way to treat certain types of mental illness. However Moniz overlooked or ignored the fact that damage to the frontal lobes could cause intellectual impairment as well as emotional and behavior changes. Freeman, professor of neurology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., took an immediate interest in the technique and together with Watts, a professor of neurosurgery at the University, performed the first prefrontal leucotomy in the United States in September 1936. Freeman felt that both nerve fibers and cell bodies were destroyed during the operation and renamed it a lobotomy rather than a leucotomy. He developed the transorbital lobotomy, using electroshock as an anesthetic, so that the procedure could be more readily carried out in mental institutions, which lacked well-appointed operating rooms. Lacking surgical certification himself, Freeman nevertheless began to train psychiatrists to perform the operation, which drew severe criticism from many neurosurgeons. Soon thereafter psychoactive drugs were introduced and the number of lobotomies being performed decreased dramatically. It was the present work which played a major role in generating interest in lobotomy. The authors present eighty case histories with photographic documentation of their patients before and after the operation. The chapters on intelligence and personality changes in the patients were written by Thelma Hunt (b. 1903), a psychologist at George Washington University Hospital and a former student of Freeman's.

See Related Record(s): 2299