Publisher Description
The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.
Download and start listening now!
About Jack El-Hai
Jack El-Hai is the former executive vice president of the American
Society of Journalists and Authors and a winner of the June Roth Memorial Award
for Medical Journalism. A contributor to the Atlantic, the Washington
Post Magazine, American Heritage,
and numerous other publications, he lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two
daughters.