Walter Freeman (neurologist)
| Walter Jackson Freeman II | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 14, 1895 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Died | May 31, 1972 (aged 76) |
| Education |
Yale University University of Pennsylvania Medical School |
| Occupation | physician, psychiatrist, psychosurgeon |
| Known for | Popularizing the lobotomy Invention of the "ice pick" lobotomy |
| Children | Walter Jackson Freeman III |
| Parent(s) | Walter Jackson Freeman I |
| Relatives | William Williams Keen, maternal grandfather |
Walter Jackson Freeman II, M.D. (November 14, 1895 – May 31, 1972) was an American physician who specialized in lobotomy.
Walter J. Freeman was born on November 14, 1895 and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by his parents. Freeman's grandfather, William Williams Keen, was a well known as a surgeon in the Civil War. His father was also a very successful doctor. Freeman attended Yale University, which at the time was Yale College, beginning in 1912, and graduated with his undergraduate degree in 1916. He then moved on to study neurology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. While attending medical school, he studied the work of William Spiller and idolized his groundbreaking work in the new field of the neurological sciences. William Spiller also worked in Philadelphia and was credited by many in the world of psychology as being the founder of neurology. Freeman applied for a coveted position working alongside Spiller in his home town of Philadelphia, but was rejected.
Shortly afterward, in 1924, Freeman relocated to Washington D.C. and started practicing as the first neurologist in the city. Upon his arrival in D.C., Walter Freeman began work directing labs at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. Working at the hospital and witnessing the pain and distress suffered by the patients encouraged him to continue his education in the field. Freeman earned his PhD in neuropathology within the following few years and secured a position at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. as head of the neurology department.
In 1932 his mother died at the Philadelphia Orthopedic Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The first systematic attempt at human psychosurgery – performed in the 1880s–1890s – is commonly attributed to the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt. Burckhardt's experimental surgical forays were largely condemned at the time and in the subsequent decades psychosurgery was attempted only intermittently. On November 12, 1935, a new psychosurgery procedure was performed in Portugal under the direction of the neurologist and physician Egas Moniz. His new "leucotomy" procedure, intended to treat mental illness, took small corings of the patient's frontal lobes. Moniz became a mentor and idol for Freeman who modified the procedure renaming it the "lobotomy". Instead of taking corings from the frontal lobes, Freeman's procedure severed the connection between the frontal lobes and the thalamus. Because Freeman lost his license to perform surgery himself after his last patient died on the operating table, he enlisted neurosurgeon James Watts as a research partner. One year after the first leucotomy, on September 14, 1936, Freeman directed Watts through the very first prefrontal lobotomy in the United States on housewife Alice Hood Hammatt of Topeka, Kansas. By November, only two months after performing their first lobotomy surgery, Freeman and Watts had already worked on 20 cases including several follow-up operations. By 1942, the duo had performed over 200 lobotomy procedures and had published results claiming 63% of patients had improved, 24% were reported to be unchanged and 14% were worse after surgery.
...
Wikipedia