https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2 By: Jack El-Hai en-us 2022-02-04 18:17:06 UTC 2022-03-31 23:51:36 UTC hello@padlet.com lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2085157681  In September 1936, Alice Hammatt, a 63 year old woman, was suffering from severe insomnia, depression, and anxiety. She came to Walter Freeman, a neurosurgeon and psychiatrist at this time, for help with these mental illnesses. Walter Freeman and his partner, James Watts, performed the first ever successful lobotomy in the United States. They had researched this profound idea together for months, and looked up to a popular neurosurgeon by the name of Moniz, who did this operation for the first time ever. The surgery consists of the brain's frontal lobes being cut in an attempt to reduce mental illnesses that are being fought.   ]]> 2022-03-09 01:56:01 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2085157681 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2086490818 Walter was born to Corrine and Walter Freeman on November 14, 1895. His grandfather, William W. Keen, had a good career in medicine, and was a role model for Walter growing up. His grandfather was one of the reasons why Walter went into medicine in the first place. Walter was often unwell as a child. For example, he once had his grandfather remove lymph nodes from his neck, which actually resulted in permanent paralysis. To add on, Walter's father was never emotionally there for him. "The elder Freeman never drew close to his sons or shed his formality with them. Walter remembered him as a shy, socially awkward, and humorless father..." (El-Hai 25).]]> 2022-03-09 16:50:43 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2086490818 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2086520242 Walter turned 13 in 1908, and had most of his personality developed. He had grown to be a very intelligent and shy kid. He didn't have much friends to play with, and so he spent most of his time playing on his own. He had one best friend throughout his whole adolescence. He also wasn't interested in girls and relationships at all. Walter also never developed a close relationship with any of his family, and even openly admitted, "...that he had never loved his mother" (El-Hai 26).]]> 2022-03-09 17:04:35 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2086520242 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2086809642 El-Hai, Jack. "the lobotomist." 2005. the lobotomist, by El-Hai, Wiley, 2005, pp. 1-312. Reading. ]]> 2022-03-09 19:40:53 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2086809642 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2086849598 In the year 1912, Walter's family scraped up enough money to send him to Yale. To clarify, Yale is a prestigious college. Walter failed a lot of his classes freshman year, and described it being a miserable experience. He didn't fit in with the people there. Walter loved taking photos with a camera that he was gifted, and said that might be the one thing that got him through that first year. Sophomore year was also bad in education wise for him, but he grew in popularity.  ]]> 2022-03-09 20:06:37 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2086849598 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2086962704 In the year 1915, Walter contracted a disease called typhoid, which made him very weak and caused him to miss his first semester of senior year. He ended up being hospitalized for a long time, and also had a lot of time to himself. He began wondering about his future, and thinking about aspects such as majors, fields, and different job options. After giving it a lot of thought and multiple trials, Walter decided he wanted to go look into medicine. Returning from typhoid, Walter improved his grades to all A's. When he finished college, he knew that his academic career wasn't going to make the cut for medical school. He enrolled in summer programs at local colleges to gain a better understanding of science and biology. He then enrolled in medical school, with the interest of neurology, and graduated in 1920. ]]> 2022-03-09 21:35:48 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2086962704 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2091125191 After a couple of years, Walter decided to move to Washington D.C. to accept a psychiatrist job offer. Walter arrived in July 1924, to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, and became very interested in the neurological field. He worked with a superintendent named William White. This man was a huge success in the hospital and area itself. Walter will work solidly with this man for 12 years. Freeman had been in Washington twice before his move, and said that he, "...wanted to see the sights this time-the sights that would interest a fledgling neuropathologist" (El-Hai 56). ]]> 2022-03-11 21:31:40 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2091125191 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2091417188 Around the month of September, in 1924, Walter was not finding friends and companions in Washington. He then received a letter from his college roommate that told him he could visit his family any time. Walter accepted this offer, and shortly arrived at the Franklin's front door, and even met a woman named Marjorie Franklin. As described earlier, Walter had never been interested in girls, and had a hard time creating a connection with this woman. Eventually, Marjorie and Walter became two opposites that attracted, and got married on November 3rd that same year. "Freeman wrote to his sister, 'With a charming and devoted wife, a good job and a car, what else could a man want to make him happy...'" (El-Hai 64).]]> 2022-03-12 06:42:12 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2091417188 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2096062750 In the late 1920's and early 1930's, Freeman became a full-time professor at George Washington University, and maintained a private practice of his own pertaining to neurology and psychiatry. He had finally quit his St. Elizabeth's job, and was quite happy. Walter proved to be very gifted in the neurology/psychiatric field, and he helped found the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. This board was about keeping psychiatry and neurology up to date. There weren't a lot of members a part of this board because it was very exclusive. The members that were on the board held interviews and examinations on doctors who wanted to be a part of this board. Most doctors failed this examination. The people described Walter as being very strict, even though he was a good fifteen years younger than all of the other members. Walter had great joy in participating in a program like this, and later on, "...the perfect partner arrived...a neurosurgeon named James Winston Watts" (El-Hai 88). ]]> 2022-03-15 14:13:45 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2096062750 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2098727647 After Walter Freeman's first lobotomy, he and his partner operated on 6 other patients using the new leucotomy technique. The leucotomy technique was also called a lobotomy procedure. About four out of six of these patients had success from the procedure, one patient was on the road to recovery, but didn't make it there due to failure, and one patient had immediate failure from this procedure. Freeman and Watts received word from Moniz that he implemented new adaptations for the leucotomy technique to be more successful, with which Watts and Freeman responded to by immediately adding these additions to their surgery. With excitement over this new possibility for mental patients, Walter and James flew to Baltimore to a medical conference that happens once every year to explain to the whole medical board about their new procedure that they have introduced to North America. "...Freeman considered his Baltimore report well received" (El-Hai 118). ]]> 2022-03-16 19:45:37 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2098727647 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2102509808 Throughout 1937 and 1938, Freeman kept working on lobotomies by improving and changing techniques that he used for it. Walter was invited all over the nation to conferences at different colleges and churches about lobotomy. Most of the time people disagreed with his idea, but he kept pursuing lobotomy and kept operating on patients. A lot of people disagreed with the idea because most patients he operated on rarely went back to normal. Most of the patients suffered from the same mental illnesses with added improvement, but no major, and full, recovery. Half of the psychiatrists Freeman talked to at these conferences obliterated his idea of lobotomy, and refused to make it acceptable. "Over time, he encountered several patients who had apparently been helped by lobotomy but who inexplicably experienced a return of their symptoms several years later" (El-Hai 141).]]> 2022-03-18 20:44:31 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2102509808 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2106351095 With the year 1945 coming to a close, lobotomies were still not being supported around the nation. Walter Freeman desperately wanted every psychiatric hospital in the nation to invest in psychosurgery, and specifically in lobotomies. He operated fewer lobotomies throughout the 1940's because it wasn't receiving any publicity. Lobotomies cost a lot of money to carry out, and if the procedure is not being publicized, then the money to do lobotomies would eventually run out. At this point in time, lobotomies didn't look like they had a bright future. ]]> 2022-03-22 00:19:17 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2106351095 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2108813235 Around the year 1946, Walter Freeman had seen that lobotomies were not helping a lot of patients in the long run, and so he thought up of a way to help psychiatric patients for a short amount of time instead. Instead of cutting into the brain, he created the idea of using an instrument to, "drive it further to a depth of 7 cm from the margin of the upper eyelid..." (El-Hai 184). He would hurt less nerves and parts of the brain when using this kind of method. His beloved lobotomy partner of 13 years had officially backed out of this kind of lobotomy. Other than not liking the idea of it, Watts didn't like the way Freeman approached the surgery. Walter would perform this surgery in crazy settings, whereas Watts believed that the hospital was the only proper setting for brain surgery. Freeman considered this procedure quick and easy, but Watts argued that it was brain surgery, and that no brain surgery should be taken lightly. ]]> 2022-03-23 02:43:41 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2108813235 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2114293891 The Nobel Prize was creeping up in October of 1949, and Moniz politely asked Freeman to vote for him for an award. Freeman gladly voted for Moniz, and Moniz won an award for his creation of lobotomies. About four years after winning this award, twenty thousand people underwent lobotomy, and "one-third of the total were transorbital operations" (El-Hai 227). To repeat, Freeman created the transorbital operation all on his own, so this was a major accomplishment for him, even though he didn't win the award himself. Freeman proceeded to travel around the globe to conferences, meetings, and universities to promote lobotomies. He tried to get the country of Germany on board with lobotomies, but he wasn't successful. ]]> 2022-03-25 18:24:03 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2114293891 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120567523 In the 1940’s, the number of mentally-ill patients in mental hospitals increased drastically, resulting in hundreds of thousands of people in one hospital. Most of these patients were not able to receive any kind of psychiatric care because their diseases didn’t have a cure. Walter had already created the transorbital lobotomy procedure, and that procedure turned out to be a reliever for incurable diseases that a lot of people had. In the summer of 1946, Freeman was officially given permission to operate transorbital lobotomies on patients in other state hospitals. When he traveled to a new state hospital, he operated on about 5 patients. Four out of five of these patients improved after 10 years of suffering from schizophrenia. “...he indicated that he would shoulder the task personally, one hospital at a time, although he readily acknowledged that transorbital lobotomy has not lasting value if only he contain satisfactory results” (El-Hai 238).]]> 2022-03-30 02:26:01 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120567523 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120568574 In early spring of 1954, Walter Freeman had reached his peak with transorbital lobotomies and was very famous for it. Walter's dreams of becoming something similar to his grandfather were officially coming true. Sadly, the fame quickly dropped because a new drug called chlorpromazine was introduced. This drug was responsible for doing the same things as a lobotomy was capable of doing. Later on, the amount of mental patients in hospitals started to decline. It had also been noticed that, “...state hospitals abandoned their psychosurgery programs and stopped inviting Walter Freeman to come demonstrate transorbital lobotomy” (El-Hai 253). ]]> 2022-03-30 02:26:43 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120568574 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120571969 In June of 1954, Marjorie and Walter Freeman gathered up their things and moved from Washington D.C. to California. Walter wanted to move to California because he thought he would be able to get more medical opportunities and he also wanted to move there to experience the nice weather. Unfortunately, only one of his desires came to be true. He didn’t get many opportunities to practice any psychosurgery, and his fame and ideas died down very quickly. After a few years, he eventually got invited to be a chairman for a new facility that was being built. The name of this facility was El Camino Hospital. He planned out most of the psychiatric department of this hospital because he believed that general hospitals were one of the best places to turn to for mental problems. ]]> 2022-03-30 02:28:43 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120571969 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120572616 During the early 1960’s, Walter Freeman was not getting enough work to satisfy him in California. People were convinced that the only reason he hadn’t become depressed at this point was because he was taking medication to prevent an illness like insomnia. He started to spend most of his time traveling around the United States to visit some of his old lobotomy patients. Freeman cared about the results of his patients, and conducted many in-person interviews with them. Sometimes, he wasn’t able to find some of his patients, but he was very determined and searched for them. He searched for them until he found who he was looking for. After interviewing some patients, he saw that a ton of his lobotomies were successful and also noticed that, “Among the 2,454 prefrontal and transorbital cases he had handled through 1956, he knew of twenty-eight marriages and sixty-two children born” (El-Hai 280). ]]> 2022-03-30 02:29:07 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120572616 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120573448 It was around the year 1965 when Walter Freeman had reached the ripe age of 72. He still believed that he was capable of performing transorbital lobotomies, and performed around thirty five lobotomies from the early 60’s to the late 1960’s. For his old age, he was quite healthy. He had diabetes, but was able to control it with medication. He had gone through a few surgeries, and some of these surgeries included the removal of small skin cancer spots on his shoulders. Freeman still loved the outdoors, and especially loved to hike at his age. "He regularly walked the beaches of the West Coast, where he loved catching abalone, and professed an interest in learning how to surf” (El-Hai 292). Walter finally performed his last lobotomy in February of 1967. 

]]> 2022-03-30 02:29:37 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120573448 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120573913 Starting in 1968, Freeman bought a camper van and drove all over the United States visiting more of his lobotomy patients. During the end of the year, his youngest son Randy died of a brain tumor that ruptured when surgeons were operating on it. Walter didn’t drive back across the country for his funeral because he was so hurt over his loss. Shortly after the funeral, he drove back to Washington to visit his grandchildren, and in 1969 decided to do another trip around the country visiting even more lobotomy patients he still hadn't interviewed. He traveled for a couple of more years and even flew to different medical conferences. By this time, Freeman began to get new kinds of cancers, and became very weak. He fell into a coma late spring of 1972. On May 31st, the lobotomy activist died at the age of 76.]]> 2022-03-30 02:29:55 UTC https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120573913 lisetilo000 https://padlet.com/lisetilo000/ytn6argb6yyme4e2/wish/2120577363 Around the year 1955, lobotomy began to be inspected for other kinds of uses. Some psychosurgeons believed that lobotomy could relieve a person’s impulse to commit any type of crime. Freeman operated on different murderers in state hospitals. For only one of these patients, Walter attended their criminal trial and told the judge that he didn’t try to take away the criminal’s mindset of crime. Walter told the judge that all he came to do was relieve the patient of psychiatric illness. Both Walter and the judge agreed that the crime the murderer committed still stood, even with his psychiatric problems. 

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