Aside from Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, Dr. Walter J Freeman ranks as the most scorned physician of the twentieth century. The operation Freeman refined and promoted, lobotomy, still maintains a uniquely infamous position in the public mind nearly seventy years after its introduction and a quarter-century past its disappearance. The majority of Freeman's patients were institutionalized, abandoned as incurable. By the time he and James Watts perfected their treatment, most of the patients were able to leave asylums, and many were able to resume living a more or less normal life. Patients, some of them writing and speaking with astonishing clarity, observed how their lobotomies had changed them.
In putting this skilled surgeon's life and efforts in context, El-Hai actually presents a controversial view of Dr Walter J Freeman as a man who helped the hopeless, which is how he was seen by his patients and the public at large in his heyday.
