If you thought that scene in Sucker Punch where the doctor gave lobotomies with an ice pick was artistic exaggeration – well, it wasn’t. That’s exactly how Walter Freeman, a popularizer of lobotomies ...

In the early 20th century we had very little understanding of mental illness and how to treat it. Into this knowledge vacuum stepped Walter Freeman, a charismatic American neurologist with a bold ...

Reading Richard McNally’s review of “Desperate Remedies” (Books, May 14), I am reminded that the frontal lobotomy, now considered barbaric, was worthy of a Nobel Prize in my grandparents’ era. I have ...

Brain surgery as a means of improving mental health was first seized upon in 1890s by German researcher Freiderich Golz who carried out experiments on dogs and found them to be calmer and less ...