Reaction to the Lobotomist

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Reaction to The Lobotomist Peter E. Doria Gateway Community College The television program The American Experience on PBS ran a section on a man named Walter J. Freeman; a doctor who was the best known for mainstreaming a controversial surgical procedure called a lobotomy. The surgical procedure was used to treat mental illness by severing the frontal lobes of the brain. It was believed mental illness was caused by physical defects in the brain (Goodman, 2008). Freeman believed that he had found the cure for all mental illness, the lobotomy. This in hind sight was a radical procedure that was combined with an individual who was driven by a hunger to become famous and desire for notoriety to create a monster comparable to the likes of Josef Mengele and Carl Clauberg. Dr. Freeman was an egocentric doctor that had great intentions but turned terribly wrong once he became famous for this controversial procedure that had no proven long-term positive effect on individuals. He was a show man who wanted fame and notoriety rather than the well being of his patients. The Doctors intentions were at first genuine, his research in which he had dedicated most time to had yielded no results indicating what made a mentally ill persons brain different from a person who would be considered normal (Goodman, 2008). This is where the tide turned and the man with intentions of curing mentally ill people by removing them from overcrowded mental institutions whose conditions resembled a concentration camp, shifted to a person with a medical type manifest and a craving for fame (Goodman, 2008). Freeman had read about a man named Egas Moniz who had cored brains in an attempt to cure individuals of mental illness (Goodman, 2008). This changed Freeman’s life, he saw a chance to become a medical deity, and alas become famous. As Freeman performed this new surgery
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