Walter Freeman

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Walter Jackson Freeman II (born November 14, 1895 in Philadelphia , † May 31, 1972 ) was an American doctor , psychiatrist and staunch advocate of the lobotomy .

education

Originally from a wealthy family of doctors Freeman studied at the Yale University first history and languages until his interest in medicine , particularly the physiology and pathophysiology of the brain awake, so he at the medical faculty of the University of Pennsylvania changed and the neurology turned .

After graduation

Shortly after he had finished his studies, Freeman began work as a resident neurologist in Washington (as the first doctor of this discipline there at all) in 1924 . He saw with discomfort the suffering of the patients at the local mental hospital, St. Elizabeth's Hospital. After receiving his doctorate , he became the chief neurologist at George Washington University .

lobotomy

Fascinated by the psychosurgical method called "leukotomy" by the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz , who developed it in 1935 as an attempt to cure mental illness , Freeman modified and simplified it in 1936 by accessing the brain by simply piercing the eye sockets . As a result, the effort (but not the risk) was much lower, so that he finally literally lobotomized on the assembly line, even if the successes were questionable. By 1967 he had treated about 3,500 people with this method. A prominent patient in 1941 was Rosemary Kennedy , who was 23 years old at the time and who suffered serious disabilities from the operation.

End of career

Walter Freeman, who, by the way, had never received surgical training, did not believe in animal experiments before using them on humans. The damage the interventions caused became more apparent. The lobotomy in general and Freeman's method in particular came under increasing criticism, especially since he also operated on minors such as the 12-year-old Howard Dully in 1960. In addition, there were now psychotropic drugs that made the procedure superfluous, such as chlorpromazine introduced in 1953 , which was advertised as causing a drug lobotomy.

But it was not until 1967, after a patient died of a cerebral hemorrhage after the third lobotomy he had performed , that he was finally banned from operating. Several of his patients had died of cerebral haemorrhage in previous years or had suffered other undesirable sequelae. With the intention of rehabilitation, he sold his house and drove a motor home across the States to collect data.

On May 31, 1972, Freeman died of colon cancer at the age of 76 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Walter Freeman. bionity.com; Retrieved March 7, 2012
  2. ↑ a b c Early neurosurgery - brain surgery with an ice ax . Spiegel Online , Wissenschaft, July 8, 2008
  3. ↑ Lobotomy: Deep cuts in the brain . In: GEOkompakt , No. 15, 06/08; Retrieved March 7, 2012
  4. ↑ a b c Neurology Today , April 2005, Volume 5, Issue 4, pp. 70-72
  5. ↑ Rosemary Kennedy “What did we do to you?” One day , October 21, 2015; accessed on July 21, 2017
  6. ↑ Lynette Hintze: Lobotomy memoir reconnects woman with childhood friend , Great Falls Tribune, December 13, 2019
  7. ↑ Hans Bangen: History of the drug therapy of schizophrenia. Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-927408-82-4 pp. 62-68 Lobotomie
  8. ↑ a b A Lobotomy Timeline , npr.org , November 16, 2005
  9. ↑ Jack El-Hai: The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness, John Wiley & Sons, 2007, p. 196 [1]
personal data
SURNAME Freeman, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Freeman, Walter Jackson II
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American neurologist and surgeon
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1972