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Material Type | Library | Call Number | Suggested Age | Status |
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| Book | Searching... Milton Public Library | 921 FREEMAN E | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.
The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Although many patients did not benefit from the thousands of lobotomies Freeman performed, others believed their lobotomies changed them for the better. Drawing on a rich collection of documents Freeman left behind and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look into the life of this complex scientific genius and traces the physician's fascinating life and work.
Author Notes
JACK EL-HAI is the President of the American Society of Journalists and a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly , the Washington Post Magazine , American Heritage , and other publications. He is a past winner of the Minnesota Book Award and the June Roth Memorial Award for Medical Journalism.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set against the backdrop of changing attitudes toward mental illness in the 20th century, El-Hai?s scholarly biography of Dr. Walter Freeman is a moving portrait of failed greatness. Born to a distinguished family of physicians, he rose to become one of the most celebrated doctors of his generation. Best known as the doctor responsible for the widespread adoption of lobotomy in America after WWII, he also made signal contributions to the science of medicine through his career-long involvement with George Washington University Medical School and St. Elizabeth?s Hospital in Washington, D.C. Yet, despite his achievements, the procedure he helped develop and tirelessly champion would ultimately become his undoing. As physicians sought other, less drastic means to treat mental illness, Freeman?s unorthodox methods, which often included an ice pick and carpenter?s hammer, came to seem barbaric. When he died in 1972, the sharply negative view of psychosurgery expressed in books like One Flew Over the Cuckoo?s Nest (1962) had become commonplace; a mere decade later, movies like Frances (1982) would openly portray lobotomy as institutionalized torture. Although the title of El-Hai?s biography might suggest otherwise, he eschews such lurid oversimplifications and portrays Freeman in all his human complexity. To this end, he chronicles Freeman?s crusade to help millions of asylum patients who might otherwise remain incarcerated indefinitely; his indefatigable postoperative commitment to his patients; and his flamboyant personality and macabre sense of humor in and out of the operating room. El-Hai?s book succeeds as both an empathetic, nuanced portrait of one of America?s most complex public figures and as a record of the cultural shifts that have occurred in the treatment of mental illness over the last century. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Booklist Review
Though the word lobotomy conjures chilling images of brain-piercing ice picks and vacant-eyed, zombielike patients seemingly sleepwalking through the halls of mental institutions, El-Hai tackles the controversial procedure and its inventor, Walter Freeman, with the dispassionate reserve of a trained journalist. Relying heavily upon Freeman's notes, letters, and journals, El-Hai reconstructs the life of a man whose main mission, aside from personal glory, was to help the helpless. That he selected what many consider little short of brain butchery to do so demonstrates, more than anything, the sort of man Freeman was. Driven, egotistical, brilliant, and focused, Freeman is as fascinating as the chronicle of twentieth-century psychiatry in which El-Hai sets his story. Freeman's procedure inspired many, not always to the good. Soviet as well as American intelligence officials experimented with lobotomy to control political insurgents. Fortunately, it sickened others. Generally, lobotomy was considered to have improved the lives of many but damaged those of many others. Even today, it remains at the center of ongoing controversy between two factions of psychiatry. --Donna Chavez Copyright 2005 Booklist
Library Journal Review
According to freelance journalist El-Hai, Walter Freeman (1895-1972) was "the most scorned physician of the twentieth century" except for Nazi Joseph Mengele. In this first biography, he deftly chronicles the rise and fall of Freeman and the procedure he championed. Nearly 70 years ago, Freeman began refining lobotomy, in which a sharp instrument is inserted under the patient's eyelid and into the frontal lobes of the brain; this resulted in nerve damage that seemed to offer remarkable cures in many psychiatric patients. Over time, the operation became widely adopted by the medical community and supported by mental health professionals, families, and many patients themselves. Yet there were always dissenters who attacked lobotomy as useless, cruel, or indeed criminal. Freeman, in turn, spent his entire career performing, promoting, and justifying the operation-even after the development of drugs like chlorpormazine that offered the promise of "chemical" lobotomies. By the time of his death, lobotomy had been gone for more than a decade. A worthy purchase for any library, especially for medical and large public libraries.-A.J. Wright, Univ. of Alabama Lib., Birmingham (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Prologue |
| 1 September 1936 |
| 2 Rittenhouse Square |
| 3 The Education of a Lobotomist |
| 4 In the Hospital Wards |
| 5 A Perfect Partner |
| 6 Refining Lobotomy |
| 7 The Lines of Battle |
| 8 Advance and Retreat |
| 9 Waterfall |
| 10 Fame |
| 11 Road Warrior |
| 12 Leaving Home |
| 13 Decline |
| 14 Ghost |
| Acknowledgments |
| Notes |
| Bibliography |
| Index |
