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More lobotomies were performed on women than on men: a 1951 study found that nearly 60% of American lobotomy patients were women, and limited data shows that 74% of lobotomies in Ontario from 1948 to 1952 were performed on female patients. [6] [7] [8] From the 1950s onward, lobotomy began to be abandoned, [9] first in the Soviet Union [10] and ...
Walter Jackson Freeman II (November 14, 1895 – May 31, 1972) was an American physician who specialized in lobotomy. [1] Wanting to simplify lobotomies so that it could be carried out by psychiatrists in psychiatric hospitals, where there were often no operating rooms, surgeons, or anesthesia and limited budgets, Freeman invented a transorbital lobotomy procedure.
Another, different, surgical instrument also called a leucotome was introduced by Walter Freeman for use in the transorbital lobotomy. Modeled after an ice-pick, it consisted simply of a pointed shaft. It was passed through the tear duct under the eyelid and against the top of the eyesocket.
Lobotomy, already denounced by many doctors as a cruel practice at the height of its success, fell into disrepute and disuse with the advent of Chlorpromazine, a neuroleptic drug. The first country to ban lobotomy was the Soviet Union in 1950 as it was considered a practice that violated all forms of human rights. By the 1970s most nations had ...
In 2007, Dully published My Lobotomy, a memoir co-authored by Charles Fleming. The memoir relates Howard Dully's experiences as a child, the effect of the procedure on his life, his efforts as an adult to discover why the medically unnecessary procedure was performed on him and the effect of the radio broadcast on his life.
An orbitoclast was a surgical instrument used for performing transorbital lobotomies. Because actual ice picks were used in initial experimentation and because of continued close resemblance to ice pick shafts, the procedure was dubbed "ice pick lobotomy".
The eighth chapter tells the story of Walter Freeman and his lobotomy work, where he acted as the eponymous icepick surgeon by devising a new method for conducting lobotomies involving an icepick inserted through the eye socket in order to cut the limbic lobe from the rest of the brain.
Others were left severely brain damaged and were reduced to a state where they were largely unaware of their surroundings. On the other hand, on occasion the operation proved stunningly successful. In his book, The Last Resort (1998), Jack Pressman discusses the case of Rose Thorner who received a lobotomy in 1947 (pp. 264–270).