September 11, 2025 • 7 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the mid-20th century, families desperate for answers turned to a radical procedure known as the lobotomy. Promoted as a cure for everything from depression to schizophrenia, its brutal methods left thousands of patients permanently damaged. At the center was Dr. Walter Freeman, whose name became synonymous with the transorbital lobotomy and the dark side of psychosurgery. Yet from these failures came progress. The shortcomings of lobotomy forced doctors and scientists to pursue safer, more effective ways to treat mental illness, ultimately laying the groundwork for modern brain surgery. Dr. Theodore Schwartz—neurosurgeon, professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, and author of Grey Matters—traces how a medical misstep opened the door to innovation and helped transform the future of neurosurgery.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
Up next, a story from doctor Theodore Schwartz. Doctor Schwartz
is a neurosurgeon as well as a professor of neurosurgery
at wild Cornell Medicine in New York City, one of
the busiest and most highly ranked neurosurgery centers in the world.
He's also the author of Gray Matters, a biography of
(00:32):
brain surgery. Today, doctor Schwartz tells the story of an
antiquated procedure, the lobotomy. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I knew nothing about Lobotomi's hand with.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
A fingers extent, it demonstrates in three dimensions the course
of the bibisi. The attlemust to the front of lobe.
The atamus is represented by the rest watt.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
When I trained in neurosurgery, we didn't hear anything about
the surgery. Didn't know anything about the history, why I
was done, who it was done on, how many were done.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
On January seventeenth, nineteen forty six, a psychiatrist named Walter
Freeman launched a radical new era in the treatment of
mental illness in this country.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Treat treat treat I saw it as sort of a
skeleton in our closet that neurosurgeons really didn't talk about.
And you can imagine. My father was a psychoanalyst. So
the concept of repressed memories from childhood, you know, coming
up and how they impact behavior was enticing to meet
your research. So I did a lot of research about
the front of the botomy.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
How about the con austion has subside and the nerds
hole to towel over the nose and mouth of the patient.
The operator left the upperiolet and started to love Gito.
I'm end of the content ciable effect.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
There were sixty thousand frontal of botomies done in America
in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, which is a
remarkably high number. You have to understand the context. At
the time. There was no treatment for psychiatric illness, so
people who had severe schizophrenican depression would just sit in
the hallways of mental institutions that were filling with these
patients with no way to treat them. And some of
the treatments were also barbaric. They would you know, submerge
(02:04):
them in ice cold water, or shock them or you know,
raise their give them insulin and lower their glucose, so
they're essentially torturing these patients. The surgery itself was developed
mostly by neurologists and psychiatrists. I found out it really
was not a surgery developed by neurosurgeons. A guy named
(02:25):
Burkhard did the first one years ago, and then Monese,
was a neurologist, won the Nobel Prize believe it or not,
for the frontal the botomy that was based on very
little scientific basis. And then there was a gentleman named
Walter Freeman who was also a neurologist, and he started
doing the botomies in America. He started out working with
a neurosurgeon and where they would drill burholes at the
(02:46):
top of the head and put essentially a butter knife
down into the brain and sweep it back and forth
on each side to disconnect the frontal part of the
brain from the back part of the brain. He didn't
like relying on a neurosurgeon. He wanted to be able
to do it on his own. He didn't want to
have to rely on anesthesiology. He was a neurologist, He
had no credentials to perform surgery, so he read about
an Italian neurosurgeon who did a procedure basically taking an
(03:08):
ice pick and lifting the upper lid of the eye
and taking the ice pick, putting it under the eyelid
and cracking through the skull into the frontal lobe, and
sweeping it back and forth.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
We didn't have a refrigerator.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
We had an ice box. The first ice picks came
right out of our kitchen drawer, and they worked like
a charm.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And he could do one of these procedures in about
ten minutes.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
The instrument was put in above the eyeball and in
the plane of the nose. You could feel it hit
the roof of the orbit, and then with a tap
of a hammer you could knock it through. The whole
thing would take three or four minutes.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
He would charge twenty five dollars for it. He would
do six or seven in a day. He would do
it with no antiseptic, no anesthesia. He would actually give
electro shock therapy to the patients to put them under,
and then you would do this procedure.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
There are reports which he proudly writes down in his
diary about fellow professionals fainting as he proceeds in this
old vomiting.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
And he would have people around him, and he publicized it,
and he traveled all around the country doing I think
he personally did about four thousand lobotomies. That's Guy Walter Freeman.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
If housewives found their early nineteen fifties existence too depressing
for woods, why Freeman had a solution that would get
them through their day happy as little clamps. If children
were misbehaving conditions we might now see being called hyperactivity disorder,
(04:40):
why they might need a lobotomy.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
And the truth is there were some people who got better,
and there were a few neurosurgeons who studied the lobotomy
who sort of scientifically said, all right, we're going to
do this right, we're going to do it cleanly, we're
going to do a real operation here, and we're going
to have psychiatrists to evaluate them before and after. And
at least a third of the patients really got better
from the lobotomies, but of them didn't, and some patients
were really damaged, severely damaged, and Rosemary Kennedy was one
(05:05):
of those.
Speaker 6 (05:05):
Spurred on by Freeman, the number of lobotomies performed annually
soared from one hundred and fifty in nineteen forty five
to over five thousand in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
So Walter Freeman did her lobotomy. Many people didn't know
she had a lobotomy. Her brothers and sisters didn't really know.
It's unclear if her mom knew that she had a lobotomy.
Joe Kennedy basically just took her to have this done.
They were hiding her mental illness at the time. It
was very shameful that she had mental illness at the time.
And when she emerged from the lobotomy, you know, she
(05:36):
was essentially a vegetable. She had regressed dramatically. She was
like a little child, and she was institutionalized after that.
But what the lobotomy did dude for neurosurgery was it
promoted the development of a lot of new techniques. So
a lot of the things we do now, the focal
delivery of radiation called stereotactic radio surgery, the implantation of
(06:00):
brain electrodes, which we used to treat Parkinson's disease and
obsessive compulsive disorder and epilepsy, and the stereotactic radiation which
we can use to treat tumors and facial pain. All
of those things. Those were developed by surgeons trying to
improve on the frontal lobotomy because they realized it was
a sort of grotesque, imprecise operation and they wanted to
figure out a better way to do it. So they
(06:21):
developed all these new techniques and then realized they could
use all these techniques to treat other neurologic diseases. And
we still use those techniques today. So the frontal abiotomy,
that was a horrific moment in time where we rashly
adopted a surgery before it was well vetted. But it
propelled the field forward fairly dramatically into a lot of
what modern neurosurgery is about today.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery and Reagan Habibe. And what
a story you just heard this one man Walter Freeman,
just pushing the envelope on lobotomies, and not all bad,
as we learn, one third of the patients did better,
two thirds didn't, and boy, it really harmed a whole bunch,
(07:09):
but it led to the development of new techniques and
modern brain surgery. The story of the lobotomi, the bad
and the good. Here on our American Stories plea hvib here,
(07:31):
and I'm inviting you to help our American Stories celebrate
this country's two hundred and fiftieth birthday coming soon. If
you want to help inspire countless others to love America
like we do and want to help us bring the
inspiring and important stories told here about a good and
beautiful country, please consider making a tax deductible donation to
our American Stories. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and
(07:53):
click the donate button. Anny Amount Helps go to Ouramericanstories
dot com and give
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
Up next, a story from doctor Theodore Schwartz. Doctor Schwartz
is a neurosurgeon as well as a professor of neurosurgery
at wild Cornell Medicine in New York City, one of
the busiest and most highly ranked neurosurgery centers in the world.
He's also the author of Gray Matters, a biography of
(00:32):
brain surgery. Today, doctor Schwartz tells the story of an
antiquated procedure, the lobotomy. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I knew nothing about Lobotomi's hand with.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
A fingers extent, it demonstrates in three dimensions the course
of the bibisi. The attlemust to the front of lobe.
The atamus is represented by the rest watt.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
When I trained in neurosurgery, we didn't hear anything about
the surgery. Didn't know anything about the history, why I
was done, who it was done on, how many were done.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
On January seventeenth, nineteen forty six, a psychiatrist named Walter
Freeman launched a radical new era in the treatment of
mental illness in this country.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Treat treat treat I saw it as sort of a
skeleton in our closet that neurosurgeons really didn't talk about.
And you can imagine. My father was a psychoanalyst. So
the concept of repressed memories from childhood, you know, coming
up and how they impact behavior was enticing to meet
your research. So I did a lot of research about
the front of the botomy.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
How about the con austion has subside and the nerds
hole to towel over the nose and mouth of the patient.
The operator left the upperiolet and started to love Gito.
I'm end of the content ciable effect.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
There were sixty thousand frontal of botomies done in America
in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, which is a
remarkably high number. You have to understand the context. At
the time. There was no treatment for psychiatric illness, so
people who had severe schizophrenican depression would just sit in
the hallways of mental institutions that were filling with these
patients with no way to treat them. And some of
the treatments were also barbaric. They would you know, submerge
(02:04):
them in ice cold water, or shock them or you know,
raise their give them insulin and lower their glucose, so
they're essentially torturing these patients. The surgery itself was developed
mostly by neurologists and psychiatrists. I found out it really
was not a surgery developed by neurosurgeons. A guy named
(02:25):
Burkhard did the first one years ago, and then Monese,
was a neurologist, won the Nobel Prize believe it or not,
for the frontal the botomy that was based on very
little scientific basis. And then there was a gentleman named
Walter Freeman who was also a neurologist, and he started
doing the botomies in America. He started out working with
a neurosurgeon and where they would drill burholes at the
(02:46):
top of the head and put essentially a butter knife
down into the brain and sweep it back and forth
on each side to disconnect the frontal part of the
brain from the back part of the brain. He didn't
like relying on a neurosurgeon. He wanted to be able
to do it on his own. He didn't want to
have to rely on anesthesiology. He was a neurologist, He
had no credentials to perform surgery, so he read about
an Italian neurosurgeon who did a procedure basically taking an
(03:08):
ice pick and lifting the upper lid of the eye
and taking the ice pick, putting it under the eyelid
and cracking through the skull into the frontal lobe, and
sweeping it back and forth.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
We didn't have a refrigerator.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
We had an ice box. The first ice picks came
right out of our kitchen drawer, and they worked like
a charm.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And he could do one of these procedures in about
ten minutes.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
The instrument was put in above the eyeball and in
the plane of the nose. You could feel it hit
the roof of the orbit, and then with a tap
of a hammer you could knock it through. The whole
thing would take three or four minutes.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
He would charge twenty five dollars for it. He would
do six or seven in a day. He would do
it with no antiseptic, no anesthesia. He would actually give
electro shock therapy to the patients to put them under,
and then you would do this procedure.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
There are reports which he proudly writes down in his
diary about fellow professionals fainting as he proceeds in this
old vomiting.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
And he would have people around him, and he publicized it,
and he traveled all around the country doing I think
he personally did about four thousand lobotomies. That's Guy Walter Freeman.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
If housewives found their early nineteen fifties existence too depressing
for woods, why Freeman had a solution that would get
them through their day happy as little clamps. If children
were misbehaving conditions we might now see being called hyperactivity disorder,
(04:40):
why they might need a lobotomy.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
And the truth is there were some people who got better,
and there were a few neurosurgeons who studied the lobotomy
who sort of scientifically said, all right, we're going to
do this right, we're going to do it cleanly, we're
going to do a real operation here, and we're going
to have psychiatrists to evaluate them before and after. And
at least a third of the patients really got better
from the lobotomies, but of them didn't, and some patients
were really damaged, severely damaged, and Rosemary Kennedy was one
(05:05):
of those.
Speaker 6 (05:05):
Spurred on by Freeman, the number of lobotomies performed annually
soared from one hundred and fifty in nineteen forty five
to over five thousand in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
So Walter Freeman did her lobotomy. Many people didn't know
she had a lobotomy. Her brothers and sisters didn't really know.
It's unclear if her mom knew that she had a lobotomy.
Joe Kennedy basically just took her to have this done.
They were hiding her mental illness at the time. It
was very shameful that she had mental illness at the time.
And when she emerged from the lobotomy, you know, she
(05:36):
was essentially a vegetable. She had regressed dramatically. She was
like a little child, and she was institutionalized after that.
But what the lobotomy did dude for neurosurgery was it
promoted the development of a lot of new techniques. So
a lot of the things we do now, the focal
delivery of radiation called stereotactic radio surgery, the implantation of
(06:00):
brain electrodes, which we used to treat Parkinson's disease and
obsessive compulsive disorder and epilepsy, and the stereotactic radiation which
we can use to treat tumors and facial pain. All
of those things. Those were developed by surgeons trying to
improve on the frontal lobotomy because they realized it was
a sort of grotesque, imprecise operation and they wanted to
figure out a better way to do it. So they
(06:21):
developed all these new techniques and then realized they could
use all these techniques to treat other neurologic diseases. And
we still use those techniques today. So the frontal abiotomy,
that was a horrific moment in time where we rashly
adopted a surgery before it was well vetted. But it
propelled the field forward fairly dramatically into a lot of
what modern neurosurgery is about today.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery and Reagan Habibe. And what
a story you just heard this one man Walter Freeman,
just pushing the envelope on lobotomies, and not all bad,
as we learn, one third of the patients did better,
two thirds didn't, and boy, it really harmed a whole bunch,
(07:09):
but it led to the development of new techniques and
modern brain surgery. The story of the lobotomi, the bad
and the good. Here on our American Stories plea hvib here,
(07:31):
and I'm inviting you to help our American Stories celebrate
this country's two hundred and fiftieth birthday coming soon. If
you want to help inspire countless others to love America
like we do and want to help us bring the
inspiring and important stories told here about a good and
beautiful country, please consider making a tax deductible donation to
our American Stories. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and
(07:53):
click the donate button. Anny Amount Helps go to Ouramericanstories
dot com and give
Host
Lee Habeeb
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