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