 Instead of holes being drilled in the skull, a sharp instrument was hammered through the roof of the eye-socket (the orbital plate) and then swung through the white matter in the frontal lobes.The advantages of the method were that the services of a neurosurgeon could be dispensed with (Freeman also dispensed with the services of an anaesthetist, as he used electroconvulsive shock to produce unconsciousness) and the restricted cut produced fewer personality changes.On a visit to England in July 1948 Freeman read a paper on his new technique at the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol, and in September the paper was published in The Lancet.