During the 1940s and 1950s the prefrontal lobotomy was performed on more than 40,000 patients in the United States. A Portuguese neurosurgeon, Dr. Egas Moniz, invented a radical procedure called a leucotomy. This involved what is basically an ice pick to penetrate the skull directly through an eye socket in order to cut the neural connectors in the frontal lobe of the brain. Dr. Moniz theorized that by eliminating these connections, the brain would not experience the aggressive and dangerous emotional reactions to stimuli that had rendered the subject insane. This gruesome procedure became known as ‘ice pick surgery’.

Dr Walter Freeman became the first doctor in the United States to perform a leucotomy. For the operating theaters in the Asylum, Freeman used the new medical building and the 3rd floor of the TB Ward. From 1948 onward Dr. Freeman operated like a ‘machine’, and by 1952 he had performed 787 lobotomies (including an astonishing 225 in a 12 day period). He could reduce an adult brain to a childlike state in less than 10 minutes. An alarming majority of these were performed on women.

The ‘ice pick’ era ended in the late 1950’s thanks to the development of psychotropic drugs which had the same effect as a lobotomy. Dr. Walter Freeman had a high-profile failure which was discredited and lost his license. He died of colon cancer in 1972 at the age of 76. Today Freeman is condemned by many as a monster.