Lobotomist

JACK EL-HAI is the President of the American Society of Journalists and a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post Magazine, American Heritage, and other publications. He is a past winner of the Minnesota Book Award and the June Roth Memorial Award for Medical Journalism.

Walter Freeman believed that "the despair of psychiatric illness demanded a decisive, drastic remedy." And that remedy was lobotomy, "cutting the neural connections in the prefrontal regions of the brain," a practice that these days, writes Jack El-Hai in The Lobotomist, "seems so obviously wrong." Freeman performed nearly 3,500 lobotomies and "aside from the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele . . . ranks as the most scorned physician of the twentieth century." And yet, "many of the era's most important medical figures . . . lent support to Freeman's work." Nor did he intend to cause harm. "I had to recognize," writes El-Hai, "the persuasive evidence that at times he acted in the best interests of his lobotomy patients, given the limitation of the medical environment in which he worked and the perilous nature of scientific innovation." (Washington Post Book World, March 18, 2007)

• Prologue 11 September 1936 72 Rittenhouse Square 163 The Education of a Lobotomist 334 In the Hospital Wards 565 A Perfect Partner 836 Refining Lobotomy 1117 The Lines of Battle 1348 Advance and Retreat 1579 Waterfall 17810 Fame 20711 Road Warrior 23612 Leaving Home 25713 Decline 28414 Ghost 305Acknowledgments 313Notes 316Bibliography 349Index 355