Doctor Ice Pick - Claire Prentice - ★★★.½

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AUTHOR: Claire Prentice
GENRE: Investigative Nonfiction.
RATING: 3.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A medical true-crime narration focussing on a lobotomist who affected hundreds of lives in the USA from the mid-1950s onwards. Somewhat dry in narration. Might work better for those who know nothing of the case.


Dr. Walter Freeman was a man with great credentials: a neurology professor, a private practice owner, former president of American board of psychiatry and neurology. He was also a man with great plans: he wanted to use his “cheap and easy” 10-minute lobotomy technique to *help* asylum inmates get rid of their mental afflictions, by which they could be discharged and the overburdened and underfunded public psychiatric institutions could focus only on the worst of cases.

While Freeman started off with a declared intention of using lobotomy only on those patients who could benefit from it, he was so determined to make his technique the most effective solution to the asylum crisis that after a point, he focussed only on the quantum of patients instead of their qualification for the treatment. Conducting “surgeries” within just a few minutes, he launched a blitzkrieg of lobotomies, beginning with the state of West Virginia, as it was among the poorer regions and hence, in most need of clearing out its overcapacity hospitals to whatever extent possible. Such was Freeman’s focus on just getting the numbers that his youngest patient was just four years old. Needless to say, most of his patients were women.

I shall not delve into the details of his procedure here. The title and the cover give a clue of what tool and technique he used. But if I reveal further details of his actual modus operandi, some of you might not be able to stomach the thought of how such a gruesome “surgery” became so widely implemented, especially considering that the patients were given only local anaesthesia and were told to walk out of the operating theatre (if at all a theatre was used) immediately after the process.

Was Freeman a genuine believer in the benefits of his treatment? Or was he so blinded by the prospect of fame that he bent over backwards to twist the stats in his favour? Who can tell! It is said that a story always has two sides, but when one side of the story is more like horror in reality, do we really want to know the other?

As I wasn’t aware of Freeman and his wrongdoings, I found this true crime story morbidly fascinating. I can’t even fathom how such a technique was used for ailments ranging from schizophrenia to tuberculosis to even cancer! How did other medical professionals not suspect anything sooner? After all, we aren’t even talking of the dark ages here. All these surgeries happened just about seven decades ago, within the period we call “modern medicine.’ Unbelievable!

However, to anyone who might already be familiar with this case, the content will seem boring. It is written in a very dry style. Even the Wikipedia page has a teeny bit more emotion than this essay. I suppose the dispassionate tone of the writing helps a little as anything more fervent might have felt too dramatized and also more traumatic to read. But I wish there was a little more life to the writing. I kept reading mainly because I wanted to know what happened next.

A part of the content reminded me of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. (You can read more about this in a brilliant book called 'Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup'.) After all, when success and fortune are placed before ethics and welfare, the result is a business where people are nothing but sacrificial pawns in the larger game. Both Freeman and Holmes had grand dreams, and probably well-meaning intent as well, but their approach of cutting corners in their hurry to reach the top compromised any good they could have done had they been more moral.

All in all, this is an informative read for those who might not know too many details of Freeman’s lobotomy drive. It gets quite horrifying, so if you have a queasy stomach about grisly medical procedures, better stay away.

3.5 stars. (4 stars for the content, 3 stars for the writing style. Averaged.)

The nonfiction true crime is currently available free to Amazon Prime subscribers.

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