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CHARLESTON ® — Ice pick surgery was performed on 282 patients in the state's five mental hospitals in July, a report released today by the Board of Control showed. The surgery, known in medical circles as transorbital lobotomy, is designed to recerve mental ten sions and aid patients toward an adjustment to life's normal de mands. The operations, like more than 200 last year, were performed by Dr. Walter Freeman of Washing ton, D. C. In a report to the board on last month's surgery, Dr. Freeman said that one patient at Weston State Hospital, Kenneth Brooks, ‘died within 12 hours of cerebral hemor rage on July 8.'' He said that an y other Weston patient “was appar ently dying when I left there on July 27. Dr. Freeman said he had heard of no other fatalities, and added that serious complications has been few, “The condition of the survivors will be reported by the respective superintendents, but favorable out comes have been numerous, ’ Dr. Freeman advised Board President Joe F. Burdett. The Washington surgeon said he also had ‘‘personally surveyed” all of the hospitalized patients of the 1952 series of operations, and had interviewed or checked upon 61 of 79 patients known to be out of the hospitals. He said he would send reports and photographs of most of those patients to the superintendents of the hospitals for their records. Dr. Freeman's letter to Burdett did not elaborate on the findings. Of last month's operations, 103 were performed at Weston. There were 66 at Spencer State Hospital, 55 at Huntington, 50 at Lakin and eight at Barboursville. In his letter to Burdett, Dr. Freeman wrote: “I hope that at the meeting of the American Psychiatric Assn. in St. Louis next May it will be possible to present the results in a manner that will interest a large group of psychiatrists in the efforts of West Virginia to better the con ditions of its mentally sick.” Last year Dr. Freeman per formed 228 such operations in five West Virginia mental institutions. A report compiled last Nov. 24 showed that 94 of those patients left the hospials, an additional 24 were “ready to go home,” and 44 had shown some improvement. Five persons died and five were described as worse. “We are certain that the opera tion did not cause the deaths,'’ Burdett said then, “and equally certain that the cases which have grown worse did not do so because of the surgery.”’ In performing the operations, an instrument resembling an ice pick is inserted beneath the eye lid. Nerve connections behind the eye are cut, relieving tensions brought about by fear, worry and the like. Dr. Freeman, a 47-year-old neuro-surgeon, did his work in West Virginia in 1948. He has performed over 1,000 lobotomies in 15 states, but the others, he said, were merely ‘‘demonstraion projects.”
Newspaper Details
Beckley Raleigh Register
Beckley, West Virginia, US
Mon, Aug 03, 1953
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Cody C.
USA 07 Sep 2026
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