The Lobotomist

[herald_tim]

I just finished reading The Lobotomist by Jack El-Hai, a biography of Walter Freeman, MD, PhD, who pioneered the lobotomy in the US (and invented the infamous transorbital version thereof) for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. I have this morbid-type fascination with lobotomy, and this book fulfilled that fascination so thoroughly as to give

Comments

[wardbear]

Implanted electrical devises are being used with amazing results to control epilepsy and Tourett's. It is very cool stuff.

[gilraen2]

I just keep thinking of how they convinced Rosemary Kennedy's father that she would be "normal" after the lobotomy - and then she went from high-functioning retardation to a gibbering idiot for the rest of her long life.

[herald_tim]

The book indicates that Freeman reports himself reluctant to operate but that Joe Kennedy insisted. (She certainly doesn't seem to have fit the criteria of most of Freeman's patients.) The truth is probably somewhere between the two, I guess.