The Lobotomy Craze: Walter Freeman and the Icepick Leukotome

Bizarre & Myths5/5 wildness

The Lobotomy Craze: Walter Freeman and the Icepick Leukotome

Dr. Walter Freeman & Egas Moniz / 1930s-1950s

Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Medicine for inventing the lobotomy. In the United States, neurologist Walter Freeman radicalized the procedure into the "transorbital lobotomy," driving an icepick-like leukotome through patient eye sockets into the frontal lobe. Freeman toured the country in his "Lobotomobile," performing over 3,400 rapid lobotomies on psychiatric patients and housewives—leaving thousands permanently incapacitated.