The Body: A Guide for Occupants

by Bill Bryson

What is perhaps most remarkable is that Freeman was a psychiatrist with no surgical certification, a fact that horrified many other physicians. About two-thirds of Freeman’s subjects received no benefit from the procedure or were worse off. Two percent died. His most notorious failure was Rosemary Kennedy, sister of the future president. In 1941, she was twenty-three years old, a vivacious and attractive girl but headstrong and with a tendency to mood swings. She also had some learning difficulties, though these seem not to have been nearly as severe and disabling as has sometimes been reported. Her father, exasperated by her willfulness, had her lobotomized by Freeman without consulting his wife. The lobotomy essentially destroyed Rosemary. She spent the next sixty-four years in care homes, incontinent, unable to speak, and bereft of personality. Her loving mother did not visit her for twenty years.