Уолтер Фримен және лоботомияның тарихы

American physician (1895–1972)
his son

Walter Jackson Freeman II (November 14, 1895 – May 31, 1972) was an American physician who specialized in lobotomy. Wanting to simplify lobotomies so that it could be carried out by psychiatrists in psychiatric hospitals, where there were often no operating rooms, surgeons, or anesthesia and limited budgets, Freeman invented a transorbital lobotomy procedure. The ice pick transorbital approach, a transorbital lobotomy, involved placing an orbitoclast (an instrument resembling an ice pick) under the eyelid and against the top of the eye socket; a mallet was then used to drive the orbitoclast through the thin layer of bone and into the brain. Freeman's transorbital lobotomy method did not require a neurosurgeon and could be performed outside of an operating room, often by untrained psychiatrists without the use of anesthesia by using electroconvulsive therapy to induce seizure and unconsciousness. In 1947, Freeman's partner Dr. James W. Watts ended their partnership because he was disgusted by Freeman's modification of the lobotomy from a surgical operation into a simple "office" procedure. Freeman and his procedure played a major role in popularizing lobotomy; he later traveled across the United States visiting mental institutions. In 1951, one of Freeman's patients at Iowa's Cherokee Mental Health Institute died when he suddenly stopped for a photo during the procedure, and the orbitoclast accidentally penetrated too far into the patient's brain. After four decades Freeman had personally performed possibly as many as 4,000 lobotomies on patients as young as 12, despite the fact that he had no formal surgical training. Shortly afterward, in 1924, Freeman relocated to Washington, D. C., and started practicing as the first neurologist in the city.

The first systematic attempt at human psychosurgery – performed in the 1880s–1890s – is commonly attributed to the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt. Burckhardt's experimental surgical forays were largely condemned at the time and in the subsequent decades psychosurgery was attempted only intermittently. On November 12, 1935, a new psychosurgery procedure was performed in Portugal under the direction of the neurologist and physician Egas Moniz. His new "leucotomy" procedure, intended to treat mental illness, took small corings of the patient's frontal lobes. Moniz became a mentor and idol for Freeman who modified the procedure and renamed it the "lobotomy". One year after the first leucotomy, on September 14, 1936, Freeman directed Watts through the very first prefrontal lobotomy in the United States on housewife Alice Hood Hammatt of Topeka, Kansas, who suffered from anxiety, insomnia, and depression. Freeman's name gained popularity despite the widespread criticism of his methods following a lobotomy on President John F. Kennedy's sister Rosemary Kennedy, which left her with severe mental and physical disability. After four decades Freeman had personally performed possibly as many as 4,000 lobotomy surgeries in 23 states, of which 2,500 used his ice pick procedure, despite the fact that he had no formal surgical training. died from the procedure. In 1951, one patient at Iowa's Cherokee Mental Health Institute died when Freeman suddenly stopped for a photo during the procedure, and the surgical instrument accidentally penetrated too far into the patient's brain. Freeman usually wore neither gloves nor mask during these procedures. At 57 years old, Freeman retired from his position at George Washington University and opened up a modest practice in California. Freeman was known for his eccentricities and he complemented his theatrical approach to demonstrating surgery by sporting a cane, goatee, and narrow brimmed hat. He was survived by four children, Walter, Frank, Paul and Lorne, two of whom entered the medical profession, the eldest, Walter Jr., becoming a professor of neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Walter Freeman nominated his mentor António Egas Moniz for a Nobel Prize, and in 1949 Moniz won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. He pioneered and helped open up the psychiatric world to the idea of what would become psychosurgery. At the time, it was seen as a possible treatment for severe mental illness, but "within a few years, lobotomy was labeled one of the most barbaric mistakes of modern medicine." He also helped to demonstrate the idea that mental events have a physiological basis. Despite his interest in the mind, Freeman was "uninterested in animal experiments or understanding what was happening in the brain". Freeman was also co founder and president of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology from 1946 to 1947 and a contributor and member of the American Psychiatric Association.

Freeman, W. and Watts, J. W. Psychosurgery. Intelligence, Emotion and Social Behavior Following Prefrontal Lobotomy for Mental Disorders, Charles C. Thomas Publisher, Springfield (Ill.) 1942, pp. 337.