Fascinating biography of Freeman and his campaign to make lobotomy a common practice for the cure of mental illness, especially mood disorders.

Reading this, it's kind of horrifying to think that Freeman's transorbital lobotomy was such a common practice - especially given that he didn't always work in aseptic conditions, and didn't hesitate to lobotomise young children, or to lobotomise some patients two or three times. Especially given that there was so little actual evidence that it did anything at all. He claimed that his patients were mostly helped, and you have to admire how much he tried to follow up with them, but there was little actual data on the befores and afters (except Freeman's portraits).

This left me with the possible idea that maybe Freeman was as il as some of his patients. He was certainly an obsessive, and the level of showmanship he incorporated into his displays just boggles the mind.

I do wonder what a world would be like where psychiatric drugs didn't come into common use, though, since it was their rise, in part, that led to the downfall of lobotomy.