27: The Gross History of the Lobotomy

Walter Jackson Freeman wanted to do something *big.* As a neurologist for the nation’s largest psychiatric hospital, he saw patients who desperately needed help. But, absent any major medical breakthroughs, Walter was powerless to do much of anything.

So he spent years searching for *the thing* that separated people with mental illnesses from the normies. He studied brains. He measured them. He compared. In the end, he came up with nothing. He was devastated by his lack of progress. Then, in 1936, he came across the research of a Portuguese neurologist named Antonio Egas Moniz. Antonio had just developed a new procedure called a leucotomy. He’d performed it on 20 patients, and it had helped some of them.

Walter wasn’t the least bit skeptical. He took the leucotomy, gave it a little spin and a new name, and began performing it with reckless abandon. It would be years before people understood the risks of the lobotomy.

Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Kristin pulled from:
“The Lobotomist” episode of American Experience
“Rosemary: the Hidden Kennedy Daughter,” book review by Meryl Gordon for The New York Times
“D.C. Neurosurgeon Pioneered 'Operation Icepick' Technique,” by By Glenn Frankel for the Washington Post
“Walter Jackson Freeman, Father of the Lobotomy,” By Al Ridenour for Mental Floss
“My Lobotomy” episode of StoryCorp

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