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Lobotomy Timeline
November 14, 1895:
Walter Jackson Freeman II born.
1924:
Freeman arrives in Washington, D.C. to direct labs at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.
November 12, 1935:
Neurologist Egas Moniz performs first brain surgery to treat mental illness in Portugal. He calls the procedure a "leucotomy."
September 14, 1936:
Freeman modifies Moniz’s procedure, renames it the "lobotomy," and with his neurosurgeon partner James Watts performs the first ever prefrontal lobotomy in the United States. His patient is Alice Hood Hammatt, a housewife from Topeka, Kansas.
1939:
While working in his office, Egas Moniz is shot multiple times by a patient. He survives but is left partly paralyzed.
1945:
Freeman begins experimenting with a new way of doing the lobotomy, after hearing about a doctor in Italy who accessed the brain through the eye-sockets.
January 17, 1946:
Walter Freeman performs the first transorbital lobotomy in the United States on a 29-year-old housewife named Sallie Ellen Ionesco in his Washington, D.C. office. Read an excerpt from Walter Freeman’s unpublished autobiography
1949:
Egas Moniz wins the Nobel Prize for lobotomy. He’s nominated by Walter Freeman.
1950:
Watts expresses disapproval of the transorbital lobotomy procedure, and the two eventually break their long-time partnership. Freeman barnstorms the nation, performing and teaching the transorbital lobotomy at state hospitals. Listen to a newsreel of Walter Freeman’s voice (MP3 format, 5:35, 2MB)
July 1952:
Freeman performs 228 transorbital lobotomies in a two-week period in West Virginia for a state-sponsored lobotomy project, dubbed "Operation Ice Pick" by newspapers.
1954:
Era of widespread hospital psychosurgery fades away with introduction of chlorpromazine (Thorazine). Freeman moves to California and sets up an office in Sunnyvale. See the Christmas card Walter Freeman sent out to his lobotomy patients.
1955:
Egas Moniz dies at the age of 81.
December 16, 1960:
Freeman lobotomizes Howard Dully, 12, at Doctor’s General Hospital in San Jose, California.
February 1967:
Freeman performs his final transorbital lobotomy on Helen Mortensen. It’s her third lobotomy by him. She dies from a brain hemorrhage following the procedure. Freeman is banned from operating again.
1968:
Freeman retires and embarks on cross-country follow-up studies of his lobotomy patients. Listen to audio diary recorded by Walter Freeman that year. (MP3 format, 0:50, 300 kb)
May 31, 1972:
Freeman dies of cancer at age 76.
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