When was the first lobotomy performed?
Lobotomy
Freeman performed the first transorbital lobotomy on a live patient in 1946. Its simplicity suggested the possibility of carrying it out in mental hospitals lacking the surgical facilities required for the earlier, more complex procedure. (Freeman suggested that, where conventional anesthesia was unavailable, electroconvulsive therapy be used to render the patient unconscious.) In 1947, the Freeman and Watts partnership ended, as the latter was disgusted by Freeman's modification of the lobotomy from a surgical operation into a simple "office" procedure. Between 1940 and 1944, 684 lobotomies were performed in the United States. However, because of the fervent promotion of the technique by Freeman and Watts, those numbers increased sharply towards the end of the decade. In 1949, the peak year for lobotomies in the US, 5,074 procedures were undertaken, and by 1951 over 18,608 individuals had been lobotomized in the US.
Louis Stromeyer
Stromeyer was a pioneer in orthopedics and orthopedic surgery. In 1831 he performed the first subcutaneous tenotomy (tendon surgery) of the Achilles tendon on a deformed foot. He introduced tenotomic surgery to England through a friend, English surgeon William John Little (1810–1894). Stromeyer performed the operation on Dr. Little in order to correct a clubfoot condition. Stromeyer was also a practitioner of maxillofacial surgery, being remembered for the eponymous "Stromeyer hook", a device used for zygomatic arch fractures.