Lobotomy PBS Documentary on William Freeman
Dr. Freeman was an idealistic doctor hungry for fame who would champion the century’s most infamous procedure the lobotomy. He wanted to solve all of the problems of psychiatry and he wanted to do it fast. Elina was the first patient to undergo the procedure that the doctor had only perfected weeks before he called it a transorbital lobotomy. In a transorbital lobotomy, Freeman would first have the patient rendered unconscious by using an electroconvulsive shock machine. Just before he threw the switch several people would place their hands on the patients as the patient jerked back and forth from the electricity surging threw their bodies. Sometimes several electroconvulsive treatments may have been…show more content… Then he would take a hammer, tap the ice pick into the patient’s brain, and wiggle it about severing the frontal lobes and then he would withdraw the ice pick. When the patient came too they would be given dark glasses to hide the black eyes they had been given. They did not have a refrigerator, instead they had an icebox. The first ice picks came right out of the kitchen drawer and they worked like a charm. Very little preparation is necessary for transorbital lobotomy. The whole thing would take three or four minutes. Spurred on by Freeman the number of lobotomies soared from 150 in 1945 to over 5,000 in 1949 despite the known side effects, there seemed to be an endless supply of willing patients. Ultimately, the fate of a lobotomy would be settled by a pill. In 1954 a new drug called thorazine began to sweep through mental institutions. Thorazine was labeled as a chemical lobotomy. It produced all the good stuff of a lobotomy without all the risks associated with surgery. Freeman moved to Los Altos California to resurrect his career far from the reproachful eastern medical establishment so he could try to bring lobotomy to a new category of patients. If housewives were depressed, if children…show more content… Fred is not sure if that is his name, everything is so mixed up he mutters to himself. These grounds these buildings they are so dark. Everything is dark, even the sky, he thinks he will never get out. George has turned them all against him even Betty. They keep talking about him. Why won’t they let him alone, he says in an anguished voice. He really does not want to enter that building; he will never get out, what will happen to him now he wonders. The Oklahoma State Department of Health in cooperation with the State Department of Mental Health presents “Mental Hospital” made in
