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

by Jack El-Hai

$16.39

Account Type

Format

Quantity

Author: Jack El-Hai

Publisher: Wiley

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 0470098309
ISBN 13: 978-0470098301

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman’s documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Although many patients did not benefit from the thousands of lobotomies Freeman performed, others believed their lobotomies changed them for the better. Drawing on a rich collection of documents Freeman left behind and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look into the life of this complex scientific genius and traces the physician's fascinating life and work.

Review

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)

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Lobotomist

"Written with such clarity and engaging detail that a reader has difficulty in putting it down."
―The New York Review of Books

"One of the many virtues of El-Hai's text is the rich detail he provides about Freeman's life and ideas."
―Los Angeles Times

"Fascinating . . . an important and disturbing contribution to the history of psychiatry."
―New Statesman

"Captivating. . . . No history of modern psychiatry is complete without this story."
―Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

Drawing on a rich collection of documents Freeman left behind and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look into the life of this complex scientific genius and traces the physician's fascinating life and work.

About the Author

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.

Filters

History

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