The Lobotomist

Dr. Walter Freeman is the son of a man who was the first in his time to do brain surgery while the patient was still awake. It was a marveling discovery! Due to this pioneering of the brain one of the many things we now know is that the brain does not contain pain receptors commonly called nocireceptors. The success of his father, Dr. Walter also wanted to do something truly ground breaking in the neuro field, and that’s when the lobotomy was invented.
The 1940’s was a time when Dr. Walter was in his prime, figuring out the effects of mental illness and he just really wanted to fix it. At the time most doctors were viewed as all knowing, or in the PBS documentary they called them, “Demy Gods”. I talked with my grandmother, Lydia Gardner about how she was raised to believe in the power of the doctor. She said you were never supposed to question a doctor. The doctor knows a whole lot more than most people, and to question him would be to question an authority. Today, my grandmother still believes this. However, in the year 2010 compared with the 1940’s, we have come a long way and to regard doctors as demy gods is to be blind. There is nothing wrong with wanting to fix the problems associated with mental illness, that is only human and a far cry from the demy gods we use to worship.
Unfortunately, Dr. Walters procedure was ill managed, ill recorded, ill researched, and lacked humility. Dr. Walter believed so much in the lobotomy to cure the mentally ill that he was blind to the statistics of his practice. It wasn’t the cure-all, and many that received one didn’t show signs of being cured. If he would have maybe started with a tiny part of the brain and very carefully tested it to determine if it might be a cause of such illness he then could have formulated a better treatment. Even though, in an industrial aspect, he was able to assemble an in expensive way to line em’up and lobotomize them, the procedure was far from a cure for the mentally ill.
Even though modern science claims lobotomies were a monstrous mistake, there was some good that came from it. We now know what the frontal lobe is capable of, even though it is still a very complex part of the brain and is still under considerable research. Due to the negative effects of the lobotomy, we can eliminate the things that are transcribed in the frontal area, and its association. I think Dr. Walter might have been on the right tract by first wanting to treat the brain, but made a human mistake in taking it too far. For his time, he might have been ahead of the game, but due to the lack of medical devises we have now, he fell very short and easily detoured from his path to greatness.
Works Cited:
Dr. Walters, 1940 PBS Documentary: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lobotomist/player/