Dr. Freeman, who along with Dr. James Watts developed what was known as the transorbital lobotomy.
The procedure did away with the need to drill holes in the skull. Instead, the patient was anesthetized with electric shock, and the doctor, using a mallet, inserted an ordinary household ice pick above the patient's eyes into the frontal lobes of the brain, moving it around to destroy brain cells. The patient was often able to leave the doctor's office the same day but was never quite the same again. (At the peak of lobotomies' popularity, in the early 1950's, even as criticism mounted in the medical community, it is estimated that American doctors performed about 5,000 a year, at least some of which were elective.)