From the November 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


In the U.S., families around the country sought out Freeman’s traveling practice to treat female family members, generally, for depression, schizophrenia and chronic pain. The Advocate magazine estimates that 40 percent of his patients were gay. The procedure took only 10 minutes, and Freeman, ever the showman, sometimes performed the treatments in front of a crowd. He once performed 228 lobotomies in a two-week period, lobotomizing 25 women in a single day.

One of the most famous lobotomies Freeman did was on Rosemary Kennedy, John F. Kennedy’s sister, in 1941 when she was 23. The procedure left her permanently incapacitated. Tennessee Williams’ older sister, Rose, suffered a similar fate. Williams went on to criticize lobotomy in his play “Suddenly, Last Summer.”
In total, Freeman performed 2,500 operations before retiring in 1967 after a housewife he operated on died of a brain hemorrhage. The Soviet Union became the first to ban lobotomies, in 1950, with Germany and Japan soon following suit. In the United States, lobotomies continued on a small scale into the 1980s. Though several states outlawed lobotomy, it was never officially banned in the United States.
Though lobotomies ruined many lives while in practice, their legacy may not be entirely negative. A similar procedure, called lobectomy, has shown promise in treating patients with extreme epilepsy. By severing the connection between the two hemispheres, epileptic seizures cease. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that surgery might be the best option for patients with extreme epilepsy whose seizures would ultimately cause brain damage. This effective treatment is a far cry from the alcohol and ice picks of the past.


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