Carol Noell's Lobotomized Mother is Remembered

When Carol Noell first became a member of Psychosurgery.org she was seeking a way to have her mother's memory honored. Her mom deserved something good after such a troubled, often sad life. You see, Walter Freeman lobtomized her while she was pregnant in an attempt to "cure" her of her headaches. Her tale is yet another Freeman "success story" - after her lobotomy her husband left her because she was worse than ever and she lost her kids.

Anyway, I am pleased to tell you that Carol has achieved her goal, with thanks to reporter Rusty Marks. Her mother's story was published in her hometown newspaper. Congratulations Carol!
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Kanawha woman struggled for normalcy after lobotomy

By Rusty Marks Staff writer

Anna Ruth Noell could have been anything.

An intelligent young woman who grew up in Marmet, Anna Ruth had a natural gift for numbers. She might have become a scientist or mathematician. But all she wanted to be was a good wife and mother.

Because of Dr. Walter Freeman, she couldn’t even be that. In early 1950, Freeman performed a transorbital lobotomy on Anna Ruth Noell in an effort to cure her recurring headaches. The procedure left her screaming in pain for months, and would eventually cost her her husband, her children and her future.

“Anna Ruth needed to be taken care of, because Freeman took everything she had,” said Carol Noell Duncanson, Anna Ruth’s only surviving daughter. “She just walked up and down MacCorkle Avenue, pretty much. That’s how she spent the rest of her life.”

Anna Ruth was born Nov. 25, 1924, in Point Pleasant, the youngest of three children born to French and Lillian Gates Channels. As a child, she was hit by a car while getting off the school bus. The door handle of a passing Studebaker hit her in the head, piercing her skull.

Anna Ruth recovered, but the accident left her with severe and incessant headaches.

In 1947, following a whirlwind romance, 23-year-old Anna Ruth married Lowry Ward Noell, a dashing man 17 years her senior. Deeply in love, Noell recorded the couple’s first year of marriage on a scroll he fashioned out of brown paper lunch bags.

But trouble was brewing for the newlyweds. In March 1948, a baby daughter was born prematurely and died at an Alexandria, Va., hospital. Carol was born in 1949, a healthy but small baby, but Anna Ruth remained tormented by headaches and struggled with her newfound responsibilities as a mother.

Six weeks after Carol was born, Anna Ruth was pregnant again. A team of doctors suggested lobotomy as a cure for her debilitating headaches and anxieties. They recommended Dr. Freeman, then considered the leading expert on lobotomies in the United States.

Freeman had been performing lobotomies on patients since the 1930s, at first using a costly and time-consuming technique that entailed boring two holes in the skull and inserting a cutting device to sever the nerves between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain. Lobotomy at the time was a last-resort treatment for all sorts of mental illness and brain injuries doctors couldn’t treat any other way.

While Anna Ruth was battling headaches and the rigors of motherhood, Dr. Freeman had been experimenting with a new kind of lobotomy. Using a stout metal probe that resembled an ice pick, Freeman found he could quickly and efficiently sever the frontal nerves.

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