Member Reviews
I was introduced to the lobotomy practices of Dr. Freeman from a podcast. It was very interesting to read more about the procedures he performed on so many people. I discovered I would be one of the people considered for a lobotomy and it made me thankful I was not in the vicinity or hospital in which these horrible practices were a common practice.
It is hard for me to believe these malicious acts could be performed on a human being, not only while they were awake, but for any reason. A doctor's charge is to do no harm. I cannot imagine this would be considered under this mantra.
For historical reasons, DOCTOR ICE PICK is an interesting read, though hard to imagine the poor people who had to endure these techniques.
This is a KINDLE e-book publication.
"Doctor Ice Pick" was a horrifying read: learning about how easily doctors were allowed to perform life-altering surgeries during the early 20th century without having to provide scientific and unreprovable evidence of their method's success was horrifying and I (probably futilely) hope that something like this can't happen today.
This short non-fiction story details some of the history of Walter Freeman, who popularized the lobotomy in the United States.
Full disclosure: I am an archivist and librarian at George Washington University, where Freeman worked. We also have the Freeman Watts archival collection, which is quite massive. A large portion of this collection is closed due to researchers because these are patient records and are covered by DC mental health laws. The only people able to view those records are patients themselves or those with power of attorney.
That said, there are still many many boxes that could have been researched from, both the perspective of Freeman, Watts, and GW. The author did not do this. I feel this was a great disservice to this story - the author kind of focused on the West Virginia part of Freeman's work, but there would have been much greater depth of information had the author used the actual archives at GW. There is one reference to GW archives, but the quotes are from others published books and articles and not new research. If they did do research here, they did not do citations.
Many more citations were also needed in general. For example, the author mentions that Freeman had a nervous breakdown but this is not cited. Where was this info from? Other details of Freeman's activities are very lacking in citations and proof. The book also made the case that Freeman focused on women who were in institutions. This is also not fully true - people not institutionalized were lobotomized. Men would bring in their wives because the wives were unhappy, and would have a lobotomy done on them. Really the women should have just gotten a divorce.
If you have a slight interest in this history, I guess this is somewhere to start. But there is a LOT lacking and unproven statements. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
Wow! To think this happened during the lifetime of some members of my family!! Crazy!
This was clearly well-researched by the author. The author noted where stats are found (love that, we don't have to just trust they're fact, as it appeared Freeman did, lol). It is a short but still tells the story of Freeman and his decades of work (abuse), and hits on what I'd guess are the important aspects. Of course with a short story, there will always be room to expand (like I'd want more of the survivor's stories) but I felt this was kept to a good length.
Thank you to Amazon Originals and NetGalley for the advance copy to read and review.