Walter Jackson Freeman II

Walter Jackson Freeman II (November 14, 1895 – May 31, 1972) was an American physician who specialized in lobotomy.

Wanting to simplify lobotomies so that it could be carried out by psychiatrists in psychiatric hospitals, where there were often no operating rooms, surgeons, or anesthesia and limited budgets, Freeman invented a transorbital lobotomy procedure. The ice-pick transorbital approach, a transorbital lobotomy, involved placing an orbitoclast (an instrument resembling an ice pick) under the eyelid and against the top of the eye socket; a mallet was then used to drive the orbitoclast through the thin layer of bone and into the brain. Freeman's transorbital lobotomy method did not require a neurosurgeon and could be performed outside of an operating room, often by untrained psychiatrists without the use of anesthesia by using electroconvulsive therapy to induce seizure and unconsciousness. In 1947, Freeman's partner Dr. James W. Watts ended their partnership because he was disgusted by Freeman's modification of the lobotomy from a surgical operation into a simple "office" procedure.

Freeman and his procedure played a major role in popularizing lobotomy; he later traveled across the United States visiting mental institutions. In 1951, one of Freeman's patients at Iowa's Cherokee Mental Health Institute died when he suddenly stopped for a photo during the procedure, and the orbitoclast accidentally penetrated too far into the patient's brain. After four decades Freeman had personally performed possibly as many as 4,000 lobotomies on patients as young as 4, despite the fact that he had no formal surgical training. As many as 100 of his patients died of cerebral hemorrhage, and he was finally banned from performing surgery in 1967. Freeman's procedure eventually spread across the world.