Psychiatric Surgery in Mid-Century Rochester: A Historical Examination In-Person / Online
In the 1930s and 1940s, the emerging practice of frontal lobe lesioning eventually reached Rochester within the broader international movement toward psychosurgery. In the United States, these procedures became closely associated with the neurologist Walter Freeman, although similar operations were being performed in the United Kingdom, Europe, Russia, Japan, and China - primarily for patients with psychosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and intractable pain.
Dr. Wijdicks will trace Freeman's early relationship with the Mayo Clinic, including his first visit to Rochester as a medical student in the summer of 1919, and his later return as a proponent of the prefrontal lobotomy. The talk will also highlight the influence of Freeman's grandfather, W. W. Keen, a highly respected surgeon with close ties to the Mayo brothers. Freeman's subsequent visit to Rochester in the early 1940s was met with unease but ultimately led to a brief and carefully limited adoption of his technique.
Drawing on newly reviewed institutional archives, Dr. Scheitler will review how Mayo physicians and neurosurgeons at the Rochester State Hospital evaluated and cautiously introduced the procedure for a small number of severely ill patients, yet "remained apprehensive regarding irreparable changes produced by the operation." This section highlights the distinctly restrained posture taken by Mayo clinicians and how ethical reflection informed their stringent patient selection during one of the most important periods in twentieth-century medicine.
Related LibGuide: W. Bruce Fye History of Medicine Library by Emily Brown
