1. Walter Freeman II Lobotomy
By: Lynelle Tremelling

2. William Williams Keen Walter’s Grandfather Brown University
Jefferson College
Served in the Civil War in the US Army as a surgeon
Performed the first brain operation to remove a tumor and also operated on President Grover Cleveland
He was a showman in surgery

3. Walter Freeman I
Walter’s Father (Walter Freeman) was a successful Doctor
Born in 1860
Double majored
Took classes in Philadelphia to court Corrine
Cold and strict father
Distant husband to Corrine Keen

4. Corinne Keen Walter II mother Daughter of William Williams Keen
Born in 1868
Distant cousin to Lizzie Borden
Very cold, strict
Walter II said that he admired her but never loved her. Spent most of her time with the children, liked to talk about feelings.

5. Walter Freeman II Childhood
He was born into a very affluent and prominent family on Nov. 14, 1895
He was very sick as a child
Grandfather performed surgery
“Little Wonder Boy”
Tutored in dancing in riding, had a governess
Leather whip when misbehaving
Gold coin

6. Walter in College
He had an odd personality and an odd sense of fashion
He liked poetry and to show off his family’s wealth-limo
A friend of his remembered meeting him at Yale for the first time while he was wearing a Mexican sombrero and swinging a cane.

7. Walter Freeman’s Higher Education
He attended Yale and got his Undergraduate from 1912 to 1916
1918 World War I-Student Doctor
1920 Neurology school University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
Began work in 1924 as a neurologist
He earned his PhD in neuropathology
Never got a license to perform surgery

8. College continued… William Spillar rejected Freeman
Traveled to Europe visited asylums in London and Paris.
He worked with psychiatrists in Vienna and Rome.
St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and George Washington University
He returned to the states depressed. He saw no real treatment for the insane. He wrote, “I looked around at the hundreds of patients and thought, what a waste.”

9. Marjorie
Barnard College stayed until earning her masters for Economics
Became an assistant professor at 25
Earned PHD in Economics
When the couple met
Six children with Walter
U.S. Tariff for 20 years
Inattentive grandmother
Marjorie passed away in 1932

10. Johann Gottlieb Burckhardt
Swiss Psychiatrist
Born in 1836 in Switzerland
Performed the first psychosurgical operation
Received his medical doctorate in 1860
Died in 1907 from Pnemonia

11. Neurology
Millions of soldiers were wounded in WW1 and returned to England, Germany, France and the US with brain damage.
In earlier wars soldiers would have died because there was no penicillin.
Scientists had many subjects to study because of this.

12. Psychotherapy
Sigmund Freud had published his theories and they were beginning to spread and accepted worldwide.
Freeman wasn’t intrigued by Freud or psychoanalysis. He thought the approach could be dangerous.

13. Treating the Mentally Ill
Electrotherapy
Hydrotherapy
Electric Showers- patient wears helmet that gives a shower of electricity.
Rest cure-isolation
Sleep therapy-induced sleep and keep the patient there for 4-6 weeks.
Metrazol-Caused violent convulsions
Infected teeth
The Media left out the bad

14. Lobotomy
20th Century
Used to cure aching pains in the body, as well as behavioral issues
Then later began being used for no visible reason at all
The U.S. performed the most lobotomies
The majority took place between the 1940s-1950s
In 1950 the Soviet Union, Japan, and Germany prohibited it as well stating, the procedure was contrary to the principles of humanity.

15. 1935 Conference Walter Freeman and Antonio Egas Moniz attended
Results were shown about chimps in which their fronal lobes had been operated on. They became passive and subdued but no one knew why.
Moniz immediately started his own research
Wrote an article in a French magazine saying that subjects with anxiety and depression seemed to respond best to leucotomies but those with Schizophrenia didn’t respond at all.

16. Antonio Egas Moniz-Leucotomy
Portuguese neurologist
1935 he performed the first brain operation used to treat mental illness
Drilled holes in his patient’s skull to access the brain
Nobel Prize in medicine in 1949

17. Walter Jackson Freeman II
Studying cadaver brains
Massive doses of insulin and use of Metrazol
Giant volts of electric shock
Was not a very successful doctor but was a good professor with his theatrical personality
The Penis Ring

18. Tools

19. Prefrontal Lobotomy
Convincing in telling people that lobotomies would cure various conditions.
1936 first prefrontal lobotomy performed in US with the help of his research partner James Watts.
He believed that cutting certain nerves between the thalamus and the frontal lobes would stabilize a person’s personality.

20. Alice Hood Hammatt
First lobotomy performed in 1936 suffered from insomnia and hysteria
Operation took an hour
Slipped into comatose and regressed to a child. Forgot to eat, speak, did get better.
She was able to stay out of mental hospitals with lessened anxiety
She died of pneumonia at the age of 68

21. Presentation in Baltimore
He did five more prefrontal lobotomies before presenting his findings
He said they all were anxious, depressed, nervous. And now were all more content and more easily cared for.
15% fatality rate
Giving the public hope

22. Rosemary Kennedy First daughter born to JFK Senior and Rose Kennedy
She was born with intellectual disabilities
Had lobotomy at the age of 23 in 1941
Lobotomy failed and was institutionalized in WI where she passed away
They explained to the public years later that she was “mentally retarded”.

23. Ammaro Fiamberti Italian psychiatrist
Performed the first transorbital lobotomy in 1937
Transorbital rarely practiced until Freeman
Freeman believed it was less intrusive than Moniz’
Fiamberti became Director of the Psychiatric Hospital of Varese when it was opened in 1964.

24. Bedlam 1946 Media puts spotlight on mental hospitals
U.S. mental hospitals look like concentration camps
Public reaction
Freeman felt he could help with a cheaper and simpler method

25. Transorbital Lobotomy
10-minute procedure-no side effects
Patient would become unconscious with electroshock
Freeman then would peel back the eyelid and place an ice pick
He then would hammer the ice pick into the frontal lobes of the brain moving the tool back and forth
He would follow the same process with the other eye

26. Transorbital Lobotomy
Watts backed out
Competitions with himself-25 in 1 day
Called reporters to get crowds
Two eyes at one time

27. Critics Colleagues protested mutilation not an operation
James Watts stopped participating due to cruelty and overuse of the lobotomies.
No consent from the mentally ill
Asked to leave hospitals because of his work being unethical
Jonathon Williams said he did not sterilize anything and held people down against their will.

28. Los Altos Symptoms were long term in patients 1950s Thorazine
Classes cancelled
Lobotomies becoming unpopular on East Coast
Moved away to resurface his career
Keen-Yosemite National Park Falls
Extramarital affairs

29. Howard Dully
Freeman diagnosed Dully with Schizophrenia at the age of 4
Stepmother and father had him get a lobotomy at the age of 12 in 1960
Howard misbehaved as a child
It took him years to recover and was in and out of juvenile correctional systems. He lived homeless and as an alcoholic at this time as well.
My Lobotomy

30. Helen Mortensen
Housewife one of his first ten patients. Kept having relapses of psychiatric symptoms.
Lobotomies performed in 1946 and 1956
Passed away during her third lobotomy in 1967
Freeman’s surgical privileges were revoked and he retired soon after.

31. Lobotomobile He charged $25/Lobotomy Traveled the country
State hospitals were overcrowded so they accepted this practice more than private hospitals.
Portable electroshock device began to fail

32. Marjorie’s Health Alcoholic Unhappy marriage Nursing home Amputation
Walter’s son’s argued and about went to court over it
1972 passed away due to Pneumonia

33. Walter’s Remaining Years
Spent with family
Randy passed from Malignant Melanoma
Visited former patients
Wanted to prove his theories were correct
Battled with Colon cancer and passed away in 1972

34. The Henry Ford of Lobotomy
U.S. Psychiatrist
Member of the American Psychological Association
Led to the use of psychiatric drugs

36. Questions Reactions to how the Kennedy’s handled things with Rose?
Lobotomy-valuable knowledge or a medical travesty?
Do you think Freeman became more interested in helping the mentally ill or getting the attention from the public and media?

37. References
Dully, H., & Fleming, C. (2007). My lobotomy: A memoir. New York: Crown.
Hai, J. (2005). The lobotomist: A maverick medical genius and his tragic quest to rid the world of mental illness. Hoboken, N.J.: J. Wiley.
Kessler, The Sins of the Father, p. 226
Tartakovsky, M. (2011). The Surprising History of the Lobotomy. Psych Central. Retrieved on February 2, 2015, from