Frontal Lobotomy

Walter Freeman was the father of lobotomy. He was born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania his father was a successful doctor and his grandfather was the president of the American Medical Association. He graduated from Yale University of Pennsylvania Medical School. Later on he studied neurology and psychiatry in Europe. Freeman then began to study the human brain; he studied people that had mental diseases. Since many patients of the mental hospitals or asylum had no one to care for them he took advantage of this and started treating them as he pleased. From his research with the mental patients he introduced electro shock therapy (ECT). It proved to be useful, but not as significant as his later procedure .Freeman wasn’t the first to perform surgery on the frontal lobe with the purpose of treating mentally ill patients. Egas Moniz a Portuguese neurologist studied the frontal brain. He used surgery to physically severe nerve fibers between the frontal lobes. One of his procedures was spraying alcohol on the frontal lobes in order to destroy the white matter that connects it with the rest of the brain. Walter Freeman was inspired by this Portuguese neurologist (won the Nobel Prize) and started working with James Watts a neurosurgeon. They experimented on dead bodies from the morgue. After finding a way to disconnect the frontal lobe, which is the part of the brain that contains emotions, they performed it on a live patient. The surgical procedure was done by drilling a hole in the skull and disconnecting the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain. Their first patient was Mrs Hammet, he was sixty-three years old and suffered from agitated depression and sleeplessness. According to Freeman, Mrs. Hammet was transformed and was able to enjoy the theater. One of the most famous failures was the lobotomy done to President John F Kennedy´s sister, Rosemary Kennedy. She was speculated to be retarded, she was kind of slow and had some periods of rage, but could handle herself without anyone’s help. His father submitted her into having a frontal lobotomy. After the operation was done Rosemary regressed as if she were an infant. She wasn’t herself and was without doubt worst then she was prior to the surgery. She was incompetent of taking care of herself. Although the operation was a failure, Freeman kept treating patients. Walter Freeman searched for a new and cheaper way to perform the lobotomy. It was after trial and error with dead patients that he discovered that it could be done without opening the skull. His new procedure was done by lifting the eye lid inserting an ice pick instrument through the tear duct hammering the skull, he pushed the instrument about one inch and a half into the brain and moved it back and forth destroying the brain. This procedure was cheap and easy, it became popular and Freeman performed it in many patients throughout the country in a matter of minutes. Some had more success than other. The birth of new safer treatments sentenced the front lobotomy and later on it was illegalized.

Front Lobotomy didn’t cure the patients but changed them. Mentally ill people succumbed to this type of surgery since they sought it better to have no emotions then continue experiencing their illness. Frontal Lobotomy was not a cure, how can destroying a part of the brain be a cure, what it did was change the patient making them emotionless.

http://www.nndb.com/people/272/000128885/

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/depression/63453