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Introduction | Transcript | Credits | Feedback
Angel of Mercy or Medical Monster? (2:08)
An introduction to Dr. Walter Freeman's story.
Ellen Ionesco's Story (4:14)
The first patient to receive a transorbital or "ice pick" lobotomy is a 29-year-old woman.
Warehoused Patients and Experimental Treatments (4:04)
Desperate conditions in mental hospitals lead to experimental treatments for mental illness.
Dr. Freeman's Research (6:29)
Convinced that mental illness has physical causes, Freeman performs frontal lobotomies in an attempt to help patients
Refining the Procedure (6:40)
Ignoring side effects and failures, Freeman continues to perform and improve his procedure.
Production Line Lobotomies (4:33)
To perform lobotomies on a mass scale for poor patients in state hospitals, Freeman develops a technique to enter the frontal lobe area through the eye socket.
Training Others (3:04)
Often surrounded by press, Freeman performs many lobotomies using his new procedure.
Beulah Jones' Story (3:10)
Family members tell the story of a victim of a lobotomy.
The West Virginia Lobotomy Project (4:41)
Freeman's crusade takes him to West Virginia where he performs lobotomies on many of the state hospitals' poorest and most vulnerable mental patients.
Fighting Critics (4:03)
When lobotomy is judged harshly, Freeman challenges critics to find an alternative treatment for serious mental illness.
Howard Dully's Story (5:11)
Freeman lobotomizes a twelve-year-old boy whose stepmother wanted to improve his behavior.
Freeman's Final Journey (3:39)
Criss-crossing the country Freeman searches out his former patients in an effort to prove that lobotomy was not a medical disaster.
Credits (2:52)
More About the Program The Lobotomist
Walter Freeman with a patient and colleagues. Museum of History & Industry
In the early decades of the 20th century, before the development of psychiatric medications, there were few effective treatments for mental illness. For most patients, the last stop in their anguished journey was an overcrowded state asylum. While Freudian psychoanalysis and "talk" therapy was gaining prominence as a potential cure, an ambitious young neurologist named Walter Freeman advocated a more radical approach -- brain surgery to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms.
The brilliant scion of one of America's most distinguished medical families, Freeman spent years searching for the biological abnormality that lay at the roots of madness. In 1936, he learned of a Portuguese neurologist who was using a thin steel instrument to operate on the frontal lobes of mentally ill patients. Freeman set about perfecting the procedure he later named lobotomy and began performing it in the United States.
Despite mixed results, by the early 1940s, some fifty state asylums were performing lobotomies on their patients. The procedure was hailed as a miracle cure, Freeman himself a visionary who brought hope to the most desolate human beings.
Yet only a decade later, the story would come full-circle again. Freeman would be decried as a moral monster, the lobotomy as one of the most barbaric mistakes ever perpetrated by mainstream medicine. Through interviews with medical historians, psychiatrists who worked with Freeman, and the desperate families who sought his help, this American Experience episode tells a gripping tale of medical intervention gone awry.
Introduction
A summary description of the program.
Transcript
The program transcript.
Acknowledgements
Program interviewees and consultants.
Credits
Television and Web production teams.
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