The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness

A biography of the physician Walter Freeman, who pioneered and popularized the practice of lobotomy, eventually performing the procedure on thousands of people suffering from conditions such as depression, schizophrenia, and even chronic pain.

There's something about the very idea of a lobotomy that is deeply, viscerally, and legitimately horrifying. It is, after all, a deliberate mutilation of the human brain, the very seat of the self. Some of the descriptions here of lobotomies being performed actually made me feel slightly nauseated, not because they are gory or lurid, but because they involve such a profound and disturbing act being carried out in such a shockingly cavalier fashion.

However, as El-Hai points out without downplaying show more the disturbing nature of the procedure, our pop culture-based ideas about lobotomy -- mainly that it served as a means to turn difficult and uncooperative patients into drooling, docile idiots -- are significantly oversimplified. The results of the operation were highly variable, and while the outcome was sometimes disastrous, many who received the procedure went on to live reasonably normal and productive lives, which was generally (if, sadly, not always) the goal. The book also avoids oversimplification in the portrayal of Freeman, who comes across as fame-seeking, self-assured almost to the point of hubris, and more than a little reckless, but also as a fairly gifted doctor who was genuinely interested in making people better and who displayed a remarkable amount of concern for his patients long after they left his office. El-Hai seldom editorializes, instead showing us how things looked from Freeman's point of view, along with contemporaries' criticisms of his methods and occasional quotes from medical historians to put it all into perspective. It's an approach that works very well, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions and to pose for themselves the thought-provoking questions raised by this bizarre bit of medical history. And there are a great many such questions, involving ethics, philosophy, psychology, and the practice of medicine in general.

I think the strongest reaction that I came away with is an unsettling realization of just how much of the history of medicine has involved well-meaning doctors flailing around almost blindly, doing radical things to human bodies based on semi-formed hypotheses and hoping for the best. It has also reinforced my belief in the massive importance of scientific method in medicine. It may be a flawed and difficult approach, but the alternative leaves us open to possibilities such as doctors mangling patients' brains with ice picks based on little more than "it seems like it might be a good idea" and then convincing themselves with a bit of wishful thinking that they've found some kind of mental illness panacea. show less

Extremely well written book about the infamous lobotomist Dr - some bits were very gruesome especially when he did his 'operations' on children. A really interesting, if horrific, book. Would recommend.

Yet to read.