Walter Jackson Freeman II

Walter Jackson Freeman II, born on November fourteenth, nineteen ninety-five, was a notable American physician, neurologist, and psychiatrist. He is best known for his controversial work in the field of lobotomy, where he sought to simplify the procedure to make it accessible for psychiatrists in psychiatric hospitals that often lacked the necessary resources such as operating rooms, surgeons, and anesthesia.

Freeman gained notoriety for popularizing the transorbital lobotomy, a method that involved using an orbitoclast, resembling an ice pick, which was inserted under the eyelid and against the eye socket. A mallet was then employed to drive the instrument through the bone and into the brain. This approach allowed the procedure to be performed outside of a traditional operating room, often by untrained psychiatrists, and without anesthesia, as electroconvulsive therapy was used to induce unconsciousness.

Despite his lack of formal surgical training, Freeman personally conducted possibly as many as four thousand lobotomies, with patients as young as twelve. His methods drew criticism, particularly from his former partner, James W. Watts, who ended their collaboration in nineteen forty-seven due to his disapproval of Freeman's transformation of lobotomy into a simple office procedure.

Freeman's career was marred by tragedy, including the death of a patient during a procedure in nineteen fifty-one, which occurred when he paused for a photograph, leading to a fatal error. Over the course of four decades, it is estimated that around one hundred of his patients died from complications such as cerebral hemorrhage. Ultimately, Freeman was banned from performing surgery in nineteen sixty-seven, yet his procedures had already gained international traction.