| Few chapters in the medical history of Athens | | | | Moniz, M.D., a Portugese physician who |
| County, Ohio, are more notorious or | | | | eventually won a Nobel Prize for his work, |
| fascinating than that concerning Walter | | | | reported the results of his earliest frontal |
| Freeman, M.D., and the more than 200 frontal | | | | lobotomies in a French medical journal. Dr. |
| lobotomies he performed at the Athens State | | | | Walter Freeman, a neurologist at George |
| Hospital in seven visits between 1953 and | | | | Washington University in Washington, D.C., |
| 1957.Until the middle of the twentieth | | | | who had met Dr. Moniz a year earlier, was |
| century, treatment for most inpatients in | | | | |
| large state hospitals, like that in Athens, | | | | impressed with the report. Within the same |
| was limited to providing a safe and humane | | | | year Dr. Freeman teamed with a neurosurgeon |
| environment. Effective drugs for mental | | | | to perform the operation, and over the next |
| illnesses did not become available until the | | | | decade the partners operated on many more |
| late 1950s and early 1960s.In 1936 Egas | | | | cases. |