New Book adds to Controversy surrounding use of Lobotomy to Treat Mentally Ill Patients

The July 14th issue of The New England Journal of Medicine features an article about "The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness" (Wiley, 2005), a new biography of lobotomy pioneer and advocate Walter Freeman, M.D. The book has startled readers with its revelations about the history and practice of psychosurgery in the U.S. Author Jack El-Hai, who spent years digging into Freeman's records and papers, has made many discoveries about the man behind America's lobotomization of 50,000 people between 1936 and 1978.

"I began my research for The Lobotomist thinking that Walter Freeman must have been a monster," El-Hai explains. "But I soon began to see that his story was far more complex than I originally imagined. During the 1930's and 1940's, psychiatric patients desperately needed help, and Freeman appeared to offer an answer to their problems. I came to regard him not as a monster, but as a fascinating, flawed, and tragic figure who started out on a reasonable path and took several wrong turns."

Freeman, a controversial figure who died in 1972, has recently returned to the news because of a campaign by patient-rights advocates to strip his mentor, a Portuguese neurologist who first performed psychosurgeries in 1935, of his Nobel Prize in medicine.

The following are among the revelations El-Hai presents in "The Lobotomist":
*    Accounts of the eighty lobotomy patients Freeman kept conscious as he operated on them, and details of the actual transcripts of their conversations during surgery

*    An explanation of the motivations that led Freeman, an undeniably gifted physician working in the mainstream of medicine, to begin experimenting with lobotomy, which damages healthy brain tissue

*    Descriptions of the unusual side-effects of lobotomy, which usually did NOT include drooling, loss of intelligence, or the inability of patients to live with their families

*    Surprising conclusions about the alleged lobotomy of the actress Frances Farmer

*    Details of Freeman's lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy, JFK's sister, in 1941

*    The stories behind the hundreds of letters in Freeman's archives from patients who thanked him and believed he had saved their lives

*    The reasons behind Freeman's frantic race late in his life to follow-up on the remaining survivors among his 3,400 lobotomy patients

"The Lobotomist" has received a great deal of media attention in recent months, including rave reviews and feature coverage in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New England Journal of Medicine, Scientific American Mind, Playboy, Nature Neuroscience, The New York Review of Books, the British Journal of Medicine, Discover, and many other publications.

About the Author

Jack El-Hai is a winner of the June Roth Memorial Award for Medical Journalism and a contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, American Heritage, The History Channel Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, and many other publications. Although "The Lobotomist" is his first biography, he has written seven previous books. He serves as the president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and lives in Minneapolis.

For an interview or more information, please contact publicist Laurie Brickley at 612-823-0724. You may also contact author Jack El-Hai at 612-870-3488. The Lobotomist has a website at http://lobotomist.com

Contact Name: Laurie Brickley, book publicist
Contact Phone: 612-823-0724
Web Address: http://lobotomist.com

New Book adds to Controversy surrounding use of Lobotomy to Treat Mentally Ill Patients

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New Book adds to Controversy surrounding use of Lobotomy to Treat Mentally Ill Patients

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