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My Lobotomy: A Memoir
Howard Dully and Charles Fleming
#UB8512
Hardcover, 272 pages; 2007
$19.96
In 1960, twelve-year-old Howard Dully became one of the youngest patients ever to undergo the now notorious procedure known as a lobotomy. Dully's abusive and unstable stepmother somehow managed to have the operation sanctioned, despite the fact that her young stepson was neither mentally ill nor violent. Dr. Walter Freeman, pioneer of the transorbital lobotomy, performed the procedure via an ice-pick-like instrument inserted in the eye socket. Decades later, when Dully was fifty-four and his life had stabilized despite years in mental institutions, halfway houses, and prisons, he went searching for answers. With the help of NPR producers doing a story on the late Dr. Freeman, Dully gained access to medical records and interviewed Freeman's other lobotomy patients and their family members. Finally, Dully confronted his own father, who had allowed the life-altering operation to occur. (The Freeman story on NPR was later revised to focus on Dully specifically, and its airing resulted in unprecedented listener response.) Though disturbing in many ways, Howard Dully's brutally honest memoir is a moving and ultimately inspiring look at a controversial chapter in medical history.
(AG)
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