Speaker 1: What's not a morning person? My me? I'm Robert Evans
Speaker 1: hosted Behind the Bastards, the show where we talk about
Speaker 1: the worst people in history, and I introduced the show badly. Uh.
Speaker 1: Today we have an unusual morning recording at an ungodly hour.
Speaker 1: What is it, Sophie. I feel like I'm the first
Speaker 1: person who's ever been awake this early, aside from my
Speaker 1: guest today, of course, Mr Daniel ban Kirk. Hello, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me back. How are you doing, Daniel? I'm great,
Speaker 1: my man, I'm wonderful. Daniel. Go ahead, no, no, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll just say I've I've been up for two hours,
Speaker 1: so I feel it's very impressive. Do you do you
Speaker 1: like mornings? I do not, But I've recently found out
Speaker 1: that I am able to get so many more things
Speaker 1: done the earlier I get up, which would seem to
Speaker 1: be very simple math, but nothing that I had personally
Speaker 1: made any efforts to experience until recently in my life.
Speaker 1: So I would say, on average nowadays, I'm up around
Speaker 1: before eight, maybe sometimes six thirty. But I am not
Speaker 1: a morning person. I hate sunrises. I love sunset. Robert
Speaker 1: would say six, that's the middle of the night. Well,
Speaker 1: that is when I went to bed last night, they're
Speaker 1: about maybe five. Well, I appreciate you making this effort. Then, man,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. My sleep schedule is still funked up from
Speaker 1: the flight. Sure, now, Daniel, we've we've established that that
Speaker 1: you're sort of ambivalent towards mornings, leaning towards not liking them.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about brains? How do you feel
Speaker 1: about your brain? I feel pretty good about it. H Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's held up pretty well. My memory is still
Speaker 1: very good, and I haven't gotten to the point where
Speaker 1: I have to have a calendar. I would say I
Speaker 1: use it for about fifty of my stuff. I should
Speaker 1: be using it for a lot more, but mine's held
Speaker 1: up so far. I think well, I think most people
Speaker 1: like their brain, except for the moments when they hate them. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that probably for the listeners of the
Speaker 1: show is statistically have spent like about fifty of their
Speaker 1: waking hours not liking their brain. Because this is a
Speaker 1: show for depressed people who like to hear about terrible things. Um.
Speaker 1: As a general rule, that's our that's our demo, isn't it, Sophie.
Speaker 1: I hope not. And I screwed up so I mean
Speaker 1: me too. Maybe I'm describing the author of the show
Speaker 1: and it's it's uh, it's primary cast more than the listeners.
Speaker 1: I hope the listeners are happy, but I'm making an
Speaker 1: assumption here either way, you're here for them. As of
Speaker 1: a two thousand seventeen study, but the Journal of Psychiatric Services,
Speaker 1: more than eight million Americans suffer from severe psychological distress.
Speaker 1: Now this is a blanket term for quote, feelings of sadness, worthlessness,
Speaker 1: restlessness that are hazardous enough to impair physical well being.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty familiar to me, um, And that number
Speaker 1: doesn't include all the Americans struggling with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, psychosis, depression,
Speaker 1: and a whole galaxy of other brain based thing of
Speaker 1: the jigs to deal with. And as some extent, it's
Speaker 1: always been this way. Huge chunks of people have always
Speaker 1: had brains that don't let them comfortably interface with mainstream society. Now,
Speaker 1: we're not great at helping people with mental illnesses in
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, but a few decades ago we were
Speaker 1: much worse at it. And today we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the man who was perhaps the very very worst
Speaker 1: of all at it. So you know, the name Walter
Speaker 1: Jackson Freeman. The second I do now he invented lobotomies,
Speaker 1: and that's who we're talking about today. They're just they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just remove it. Yep, We'll just we'll just we'll
Speaker 1: just scramble it up a little bit. Actually, yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: you yell too much. We'll remove it. Oh you had
Speaker 1: an unwanted pregnancy. We'll remove it, and not just the
Speaker 1: pregnancy part. No, actually we will keep the pregnancy, but
Speaker 1: we'll scramble that brain up. Yeah. And I've heard, well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll touch on some of them, but I've
Speaker 1: just heard horror stories of like, well, we had a
Speaker 1: sister and then she just wouldn't stop arguing with our parents,
Speaker 1: so she went away. She liked boys, so we stuck
Speaker 1: a needle in a brain. Oh what a time it was. Yeah, Okay, man,
Speaker 1: I am going to bunker down for this. Yeah. My
Speaker 1: dog is a registered therapy dog if you need to
Speaker 1: pat her. Okay, great, awesome? Is she registered lobotomist, Sophie,
Speaker 1: Because I feel like there's a lot of money in that. No,
Speaker 1: but we'll look into it. We'll look into it. Walter
Speaker 1: Jackson Freeme in the second was born on November four
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Walter the First, was also
Speaker 1: a doctor, but not a very good one. He hated
Speaker 1: the work, and he did it only grudgingly. He was
Speaker 1: like an ear nose and throat doctor, and it was
Speaker 1: said that his ideal world would have been one in
Speaker 1: which people didn't have ears, noses, or throats, so he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to work. His son took that one next level.
Speaker 1: Then you want things just removed that you don't want
Speaker 1: to deal with that. That's what I'm gonna do, Dad, now.
Speaker 1: Walter Jackson the seconds h grandfather, Keen Freeman, was one
Speaker 1: of the most celebrated physicians of his age and was
Speaker 1: like the first doctor who did a bunch of important things.
Speaker 1: He was a legitimate, like trailblazing medical motherfucker. So Walter
Speaker 1: Freeman the Second was a sick child, which was not
Speaker 1: unusual in an error where the average fist fight came
Speaker 1: with a better pragnosis than the average surgery. He developed
Speaker 1: in large lymph nodes when he was fourteen months old,
Speaker 1: which his grandfather had to cut out. The surgery worked,
Speaker 1: but it permanently paralyzed some of the muscles in Walter's
Speaker 1: shoulder and head. Uh. Walter the second also underwent tons
Speaker 1: selectomy and suffered from diphtheria, scarlet fever, the measles, whooping cough,
Speaker 1: the mumps, and pink eye. I don't want to say
Speaker 1: that God definitely one of this baby dead, but I
Speaker 1: think the evidence speaks for itself. M Yeah, they tried. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did his best. Young Walter's first memory was of
Speaker 1: the head of a pickaxe breaking through the wall of
Speaker 1: his nursery as the result of a home demolition that
Speaker 1: got a little sloppy. Which is a pretty pretty badass
Speaker 1: first memory. You gotta give it. Oh, yeah for sure. Also, uh,
Speaker 1: not too far off of an analogy of what he
Speaker 1: would later do to people's own lives, and not too
Speaker 1: far off from a great scene in The Shining, which
Speaker 1: starred Jack Nicholson, who was also in One Flew Over
Speaker 1: the Cuckoo's Nest movie about a lobotomy. Oh that was
Speaker 1: a good not We tied a lot of things together.
Speaker 1: U now. The wonderful biography of Walter the Lobotomist notes
Speaker 1: that he also nursed a lifelong fear of horses, but
Speaker 1: never knew why. That doesn't come up again I just
Speaker 1: think it's interesting people are terrified of something for no
Speaker 1: reason and they can't let it go. Well, I'm also
Speaker 1: afraid of horses. Okay, well that's not what we're talking
Speaker 1: about today. All right, Well you need to put that in.
Speaker 1: You need that needs to go in the book. Are
Speaker 1: you scared of anything on like an existential level that
Speaker 1: that makes no sense to you? I don't. Well that's
Speaker 1: but if you're scared of it, doesn't it make sense
Speaker 1: to you? So not always? I don't know. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: very afraid of prison. Okay, that makes total sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what. But what it makes sense to me? But
Speaker 1: it is like, yeah, when I just think about not
Speaker 1: being able to get out of somewhere that destined to
Speaker 1: like you know, like they're like, oh, we decide. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't like it. Bothers me. That shows
Speaker 1: sixty days in Have you watched that? No? That sounds
Speaker 1: like a fucking nightmare. Though. It's like they embed civilians
Speaker 1: into like a prison system. The only person that knows
Speaker 1: they're not an actual prisoner is the warden, and then
Speaker 1: the camera crew sets up as though they're doing a
Speaker 1: documentary in the prison, but they used that to do,
Speaker 1: like their confessional talking head moments. So they interview a
Speaker 1: lot of prisoners, but none of them assumed, well, one
Speaker 1: of us isn't actually even supposed to be here, and
Speaker 1: their jobs to like last sixty days, and quite a
Speaker 1: few of them end up just getting beaten up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. One was bad at his cover story
Speaker 1: of what he was supposed to be in there for.
Speaker 1: So once you just start lying to other prisoners, they
Speaker 1: assume you must be a pedophile, and that's why you're like,
Speaker 1: no fun intended kg about what you got in there for.
Speaker 1: And that didn't end well for that guy either. Once
Speaker 1: everybody was like, oh, you're a pedophile, he's like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, And then they don't care about that. That's
Speaker 1: what they think, So you get beat up there. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there is any cash price. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think, like you would have to have to be
Speaker 1: I would only do it for enough money that I
Speaker 1: would be able to buy a cabin in the woods,
Speaker 1: Like would have to give me cabin in the woods
Speaker 1: money in order to like do that fucking thing. But
Speaker 1: that sounds like the worst. That's like it would have
Speaker 1: to be nice woods and so you for like you
Speaker 1: would do it. Five hundred is going to be the
Speaker 1: low end of that ship. I'm talking a nice cabin.
Speaker 1: See one time I went when I toured Alcatraz, they
Speaker 1: let us go into the solitary confinement and they're like,
Speaker 1: anybody want to check it out? And then I thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, lean in on your fear. So I
Speaker 1: went in and the guys shut the door. They're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you call it. Probably a park
Speaker 1: ranger at this point because of what Alcatraz is, and
Speaker 1: then the tour guide whatever, and uh then he pretended
Speaker 1: that the door was stuck and he couldn't get me out.
Speaker 1: And I did not enjoy those few very short moments
Speaker 1: that felt like very long hours. See I would I
Speaker 1: would live in Alcatraz if it could just be my
Speaker 1: house and I had a sack of rifles and an
Speaker 1: Internet connection. Um, that would be fun. I could take
Speaker 1: pot shots at Silicon Valley would be satisfying. I would
Speaker 1: sign up for that podcast. Mm hm, welcome back to
Speaker 1: Robert on the Rock. It's another episode. Okay, we should
Speaker 1: probably get back to the podcast. We were talking he
Speaker 1: scared of horses. Now, when Walter was a small child,
Speaker 1: his family moved to an area near Rittenhouse Square, a
Speaker 1: once fancy but now slummy neighborhood. Uh and this is
Speaker 1: again in Philadelphia now. Freeman would later recall it as
Speaker 1: a rather dingy place where nursemaid's wheeled baby carriages and gossiped.
Speaker 1: Walter's family was quite well off, and he came up
Speaker 1: with maids and cooks and nanny's to attend to his
Speaker 1: and his parents every whim. He was not overly adventurous
Speaker 1: as a child, and later wrote of himself on the whole,
Speaker 1: I think I was a sensitive, imaginative boy, docile, shut
Speaker 1: in a bit, and full of questions. His parents nicknamed
Speaker 1: him Little Walter Why Why, And the growing boy was
Speaker 1: particularly intrigued by the family business medicine. He had a
Speaker 1: good relationship with his grandfather, but almost no real friends.
Speaker 1: The only boy he played with regularly was his younger
Speaker 1: cousin Morris. The book The Lobotomist describes their friendship as
Speaker 1: basically identical to a Calvin and hobb strip. Walter and
Speaker 1: Morris nursed a mutual contempt for girls and made grand
Speaker 1: plans for the Society for the Prevention of Useless Girls
Speaker 1: spugs for short. Disdaining the company of other children, they
Speaker 1: set up another exclusive secret society, just two members strong,
Speaker 1: which they called the wal Risk Club. Yeah, that's like
Speaker 1: the fucking Calvin and Hobbs strip. Yeah, and they got
Speaker 1: a Transmorguar fire. Wasn't that one of the things through times? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So did I. It's kind of a bummer if you
Speaker 1: imagine this is what happened to Calvin when he grew up.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that. Don't do that. Don't do That'll
Speaker 1: be more Hobbs. I could see Hobbs getting into this
Speaker 1: line of work, but definitely not scrambling brains now. Walter
Speaker 1: was a good student. He excelled in Latin and Greek,
Speaker 1: and he won prizes for his scholastics. He was never
Speaker 1: any good at sports, nor did he grow any more
Speaker 1: adept with the opposite sex. As he blossomed into a teenager,
Speaker 1: he found girls bothersome and later wrote, I think I
Speaker 1: actively disliked girls until I went to college. This is
Speaker 1: all going to make so much sense later, This is
Speaker 1: all going to make so much sense immediately. Um. Walter
Speaker 1: Freeman was the oldest of six siblings, all but two
Speaker 1: of whom were boys. He did not get along well
Speaker 1: with him, nor did he particularly care for his parents.
Speaker 1: Walter would later note repeatedly that he never loved his mother.
Speaker 1: He was only a little closer to his father, who
Speaker 1: took him and his brothers on regular hiking, fishing, and
Speaker 1: camping trips. The elder Walter hated his medical practice and
Speaker 1: considered the outdoors his only refuge. He was a weird dude. Once,
Speaker 1: when Walter the Second was caught skipping school, his father
Speaker 1: punished him by whipping himself in front of the truant officer. Wait, WHOA, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the dad whipped himself or he had Walter the Second, No,
Speaker 1: he whipped the dad whipped himself in front of the
Speaker 1: truant officer to myself by skipping school. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: did it in front of the cop. WHOA, Like that's
Speaker 1: that's so fucked up. It takes like you really have
Speaker 1: to process that ship because the layers fucking up the
Speaker 1: kid's head, you know that. Like I'm a truant officer.
Speaker 1: Imagine that guy. He's like, Hey, well buddy, I just
Speaker 1: want kids to go to school. Why are we doing this?
Speaker 1: All you gotta do is sign the sheet man. All
Speaker 1: you gotta do is sign the sheet that I told
Speaker 1: you he wasn't at school put me down. Why did
Speaker 1: you bring a whip to this meeting? You? You don't
Speaker 1: need to do this. No one's asking you to do this, sir.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to know. I'm also gonna have to
Speaker 1: write you up for right for whipping yourself because I
Speaker 1: have to document that I witnessed this. He missed a
Speaker 1: day of school. This isn't really a whipping situation. I
Speaker 1: wondered what you meant when you were like, cool, I'll
Speaker 1: bring my whip. H Yeah, I have trouble getting my
Speaker 1: head around. What kind of man does that? Oh? I know?
Speaker 1: And then I'm sure the truan officer was like I
Speaker 1: wanted the kid to leave, and then just like in
Speaker 1: Will Farrell and he's bonding down, the dad was like,
Speaker 1: let the boy watch. I feel that's horrific. That's a
Speaker 1: mind fuck. Yeah, that's a galaxy level mind fuck. Oh boy.
Speaker 1: I bet that true an officer felt bad for that.
Speaker 1: I bet in the future he was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: you need to stop skipping school, but we're not going
Speaker 1: to tell your dad any officer. Let everyone's skip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like, I'm not going through that again. I
Speaker 1: am not doing that again. So uh as is probably
Speaker 1: not a surprise hearing that Walter's father was no less
Speaker 1: awkward when it came to talking to his young adults
Speaker 1: song about sex. Years later, Walter recalled, I had been
Speaker 1: showing interest in the external anatomy of my young girl
Speaker 1: cousins with the aid of his ancient textbooks on anatomy
Speaker 1: and gynecology illustrated with woodcuts. He dilated upon internal anatomy, reproduction,
Speaker 1: and especially venereal disease, threatening to have me followed or
Speaker 1: even tempted by operatives who would report to him. I
Speaker 1: was thoroughly uncomfortable, but remained a virgin. He never alluded
Speaker 1: to it again. So if you're a young parent out
Speaker 1: there looking to stop your kid from fucking too early,
Speaker 1: this is one way to keep them a virgin for
Speaker 1: a very long time. Yeah, or watch a racer head
Speaker 1: but yeah, or watch your racer head. Yeah. But okay,
Speaker 1: So he he got way into his He said, straight up,
Speaker 1: I was really into my female cousins anatomy. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he well, you know, you know that's that's fucked up.
Speaker 1: I think in an earlier age in which boys and
Speaker 1: girls did not socialize. Like you run into stories like
Speaker 1: that a lot in the early nineteen hundreds just because
Speaker 1: like you weren't hanging out with any other girls, So
Speaker 1: like that's when people would have that. Really it's it's
Speaker 1: messed up and a symptom of some unhealthy things in
Speaker 1: the culture. But I'm not gonna say that that right,
Speaker 1: there is evidence that Walter was weird from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Maybe they were the only girls he spent any time around.
Speaker 1: And I guess so when you stay at yeah anime,
Speaker 1: to me, it's like he makes me feel like I
Speaker 1: guess I in tone that he's more preoccupied, Like it's
Speaker 1: okay to wonder what's under their clothes, but don't start
Speaker 1: wondering what's under their skin. I think that was just
Speaker 1: sort of, um a euphemism they used because again, nobody
Speaker 1: had good vocabulary to talk about like bodies back then,
Speaker 1: because everyone was fucked up, and you know, it was
Speaker 1: an even less healthy time. There was no feveral summer
Speaker 1: or Midwestern boy autumn at which I'm currently a part of.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's yeah. Midwestern boy autumn is good. Uh,
Speaker 1: Southeastern boy late summer slash early fall, which really doesn't
Speaker 1: get going until November. Um, get a lot of them.
Speaker 1: I like slutty people, April showers. That's my favorite time
Speaker 1: of year. Slutty people, April showers. Um, there has to
Speaker 1: be a porn star named April Showers, right of course.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, there's like they're okay, I hope, So
Speaker 1: we're putting in the universe. If there isn't, I also
Speaker 1: called DIBs. If any of us get into porn, I
Speaker 1: mean we're that's gonna be the sequel podcast to this one.
Speaker 1: Robert Evans makes a porno. Um, it is not going
Speaker 1: to be popular. Uh. Back to Walter freemanow So, Walter
Speaker 1: graduated from high school when he was just sixteen years old. Uh.
Speaker 1: He immediately started attending classes at Yale UM. He was
Speaker 1: academically excellent, but completely miserable. He was too young an
Speaker 1: immature to get up to any kind of animal house
Speaker 1: type bonding shenanigans with his fellow young men, and his
Speaker 1: utter disdain for women made most kinds of socialization impossible.
Speaker 1: It turns out it's not great to be in college
Speaker 1: at age sixteen. Not not the best time to do that. Uh.
Speaker 1: He briefly worked for the Yale Daily News. But was
Speaker 1: let go after he spilled a bunch of alphabetized subscriber
Speaker 1: cards in front of his editor. He joined the swim
Speaker 1: team at one point, but refused to practice when anyone
Speaker 1: was around. He want people to see him with his
Speaker 1: shirt off. Um, so he's You get a feel for
Speaker 1: the kind of young man Walter Freeman was not a
Speaker 1: comfortable one. Um now, and in fairness, knowing about his dad,
Speaker 1: how could he possibly have been right? His initial degree
Speaker 1: program was engineering, but this track was disrupted at the
Speaker 1: end of his junior year when he ate a bad
Speaker 1: batch of raw clams and caught typhoid fever. He spent
Speaker 1: months laid up with this, in an assortment of other
Speaker 1: ailments that took up the entirety of his first semester
Speaker 1: senior year at Yale. The long months he spent at
Speaker 1: hospitals and sick beds helped Walter realize that he wanted
Speaker 1: something different out of life, a career in medicine. M now.
Speaker 1: He'd initially not wanted to go down that road, do
Speaker 1: largely to the fact that his father had told him
Speaker 1: it was a terrible life. Don't be a fucking doctor.
Speaker 1: As he whips himself. Uh, this isn't about you. I'm
Speaker 1: whipping myself because someone else left a muffin out on
Speaker 1: the counter. This is they're whipping. But I needed to
Speaker 1: talk to you. Also, he's third generations to his dad.
Speaker 1: Probably was forced into it by his dad. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so he maybe this was his one thing where he
Speaker 1: was trying to be like, you don't do what you
Speaker 1: don't have. You don't have to do this, and it
Speaker 1: didn't matter. I feel like he's saying, you don't have
Speaker 1: to do this while everybody looks at him whipping himself
Speaker 1: and it's like, you really don't have to do this. So, uh, Walter,
Speaker 1: seeing his dad was a miserable, fucked up person, Walter
Speaker 1: instead looked towards his grandfather as a role model and
Speaker 1: enrolled in summer classes at the University of Chicago to
Speaker 1: catch up on medical school before or to catch up
Speaker 1: on like medicine and science related classes before starting medical
Speaker 1: school the next year. He excelled in this as well,
Speaker 1: and attempted to rebuild his health by walking thirty minutes
Speaker 1: to and from campus every day carrying a heavy box
Speaker 1: of bones. I don't know where you could just get
Speaker 1: bones back then. Yeah, he just decided he needed. He
Speaker 1: wanted to like get healthy, and a way to do
Speaker 1: it was to carry around a lot of bones. And
Speaker 1: because he's a person, a rock isn't good enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were more bones than rocks back then. There were
Speaker 1: just people dying left and right. So he stopped H.
Speaker 1: Holmes's place and picked up what years this that doesn't
Speaker 1: check out? Actually I think it might check out this
Speaker 1: late late eighteen nineties. I don't remember exactly when H.
Speaker 1: Jones was. No, he would have been. He would have been.
Speaker 1: He was born in nive so, but there would have
Speaker 1: been there would have been a lot of bones laying
Speaker 1: around in the early nine hundred bone heavy period. World
Speaker 1: War One was on a shiploads of bones. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he excelled in his classes, and he was getting better,
Speaker 1: you know, healthier thanks to his bone box. But in
Speaker 1: spite of all this, he he got sick again very
Speaker 1: quickly and was soon bedridden. He later recalled I wrote
Speaker 1: home saying, I guess God didn't want me to study medicine.
Speaker 1: In reply, I received a stern admonition not to think
Speaker 1: that way, much less to mention it. Wait, Robert, he
Speaker 1: got sick again, Yeah, he kept he was very sick.
Speaker 1: He was a sick, sick young man. Oh man, this
Speaker 1: is You're right. Mother Nature was trying to kill him.
Speaker 1: God was definitely trying to stop him from being He's
Speaker 1: a fighter. He's a fighter. He is a persistent son
Speaker 1: of a bit. He shouldn't have been let it go.
Speaker 1: He should not have been somebody should have walked in
Speaker 1: whipping themselves and been like, this is so that you
Speaker 1: can let it go, Just go. Yeah, that's I think
Speaker 1: that we have to land on the conclusion that if
Speaker 1: only there'd been more whipping in his childhood, he would
Speaker 1: have turned out better. Can I ask you a foreshadowing
Speaker 1: question that I don't expect you to answer yet because
Speaker 1: I don't know that we should even if you can.
Speaker 1: But much like we all wonder, like what purpose does
Speaker 1: mosquitoes provide? Like what uh, what did they give us
Speaker 1: in the long run or whatever other than just bad stuff,
Speaker 1: I would love to know by the end of this episode,
Speaker 1: I already hate him. If at some point you're gonna
Speaker 1: be like, well, actually, because of the lobotomy, we now
Speaker 1: have this positive thing in our world, and I'm anxious
Speaker 1: to see if if that comes about at all. Yes,
Speaker 1: he was actually this is getting ahead a little bit.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to do that to you. I'm just
Speaker 1: that's what's already in my had I'm like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: hope there's some benefit to this fucker. Yeah. The spoiler
Speaker 1: I will give you is that it turned out he
Speaker 1: was right for the wrong reasons, or at least he
Speaker 1: was right, but it led him to do the wrong things.
Speaker 1: Like the little kid in a Bronx tail. I've not
Speaker 1: seen you. Oh he covers for he covers for a
Speaker 1: mob guy. And he asked his dad, Robert de Niro.
Speaker 1: He goes, I did I did a good thing, right, Dad?
Speaker 1: And he goes, yeah, you did. You did a good
Speaker 1: thing for a bad man, Like it was the right thing,
Speaker 1: but you did it for the wrong person. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: it's a little different than that. We'll get well, we'll
Speaker 1: get there. So after a second ton selectomy, Freeman's health improved,
Speaker 1: and soon he was off to medical school. During the
Speaker 1: first Hand bones in hand. During the First World War,
Speaker 1: he was drafted into the Army Medical Corps and he
Speaker 1: became a sergeant. He continued his education. He was demoted
Speaker 1: once for threatening his company commander with a shoe, but
Speaker 1: otherwise had a solid service we're not. We can't skip
Speaker 1: this with a shoe just a little shoe fight. You've
Speaker 1: had a couple. I've never had a shoe fight. We
Speaker 1: we all have the odds shoe fight. I can Tina Turner,
Speaker 1: that's the most popular shoe fight of all time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just like an argument and he like picked
Speaker 1: up his shoe and yelled at somebody and didn't realize
Speaker 1: that they were his commanding officer. Um it's less interesting
Speaker 1: than you'd think. It's funnier when you just summarize it
Speaker 1: that way. Um. Now. Walter graduated as a doctor in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, the second in his class. By this point,
Speaker 1: he had become so enamored with medicine that every other
Speaker 1: aspect of his past had followed by the wayside. Medicine,
Speaker 1: he wrote, held my interest to the point where I
Speaker 1: excluded many other things. In fact, I was barely aware
Speaker 1: of my family. Do not recall what they were doing
Speaker 1: or where they were during this period. So Walter has
Speaker 1: fallen fully into medicine. And speaking of falling fully into something,
Speaker 1: Daniel van Kirk, it's time for us and our audience
Speaker 1: to fall fully into the products and services that support
Speaker 1: this program. Let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. Let's
Speaker 1: let's whip ourselves in front of the audience to convince
Speaker 1: them to buy these these products that support the show.
Speaker 1: Imagine me wailing on myself with a cat of nine tales.
Speaker 1: It makes me sad. But you, I didn't come to school,
Speaker 1: and so now you have to hurt yourself. And yeah,
Speaker 1: now I have to hurt myself products. We're back. So
Speaker 1: when we left off, Walter Freeman had fallen in love
Speaker 1: with medicine and had forgotten what his family was even doing.
Speaker 1: He was so enthralled with his new career, and in
Speaker 1: his father's case, what he was doing was dying of
Speaker 1: liver cancer. Now, yeah, yeah, yeah, Walter could not really
Speaker 1: have cared less about this. The only thing he did
Speaker 1: to help his father during this period, because he was
Speaker 1: living at home still, it was periodically shave him with
Speaker 1: a straight razor. He refused to soften his dad's stubble
Speaker 1: in warm water before shaving him because quote, the task
Speaker 1: was distasteful, and I finished it as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: I'm sure my mother would have been more gentle, but
Speaker 1: she considered shaving a man's job, and I was the
Speaker 1: only one at home, so like, I'm gonna I'll shave you, dad,
Speaker 1: but I'm not gonna like make it pleasant for you,
Speaker 1: because I want to get done with this ship quick.
Speaker 1: Great great kid. Now, although his dad was kind of
Speaker 1: sucked him up, so fair, I guess you have to
Speaker 1: whip me. I can't do it myself. I can't get
Speaker 1: shaved without a whipping. As a medical intern, Walter was
Speaker 1: somewhat uneven. He excelled in neurology, but proved less apt
Speaker 1: at handling what he called scut work, like transporting urine
Speaker 1: samples for analysis. Sometimes he would pour samples down the
Speaker 1: drain just to be rid of them. He was fascinated
Speaker 1: by neurosurgery, but too bored of the details of it
Speaker 1: to actually learn to perform surgery. He was fascinated by illness,
Speaker 1: but almost bored by the actual human beings he had
Speaker 1: to treat. He was, in short, a very strange dude,
Speaker 1: as this passage from the lobotomist makes clear. Soon another
Speaker 1: patient commanded Freeman's curiosity. A young man who arrived at
Speaker 1: the hospital with his penis and dire shape and flamed
Speaker 1: and dark. The organ was encircled by a ring that
Speaker 1: the patient's girlfriend had thrust over it but was unable
Speaker 1: to remove Freeman. Yet, we're talking like nineteen twenties cock rings.
Speaker 1: I think we're talking a normal ring that she put
Speaker 1: on his cock and it became a problem when he
Speaker 1: got hard. No. Yeah, that's why you use the like
Speaker 1: the bendy rubber ones, not like a normal metal ring.
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Speaker 1: most pain a cock ring can put you in, you
Speaker 1: want a Josiah and Son's cock ring that was too perfect.
Speaker 1: Now in Redwood, So a guy walks in and says, hey,
Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta. And you know that that conversation
Speaker 1: was awkward because much like you just talked about, no
Speaker 1: one was using good like healthy like jargon for each
Speaker 1: other to talk about themselves. Or they don't think anyone
Speaker 1: uses the word penis in that entire conversation. He's like,
Speaker 1: I've gone problematic in my nethers. Ye. So uh. Freeman
Speaker 1: ended the patient's agony by filing through the ring and
Speaker 1: twisting it free with forceps. The boy asked for the ring,
Speaker 1: but I told him it was a specimen and that
Speaker 1: I would have to keep it. Freeman wrote, I had
Speaker 1: the ring, repad and the Freeman Man crest and de
Speaker 1: graved on it for years. Afterward, Freeman wore the specimen
Speaker 1: on a goat shade. If we were in an episode
Speaker 1: of Mine Hunters, this is what we would call a trophy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fucked up. What a conversation starter, though. I like
Speaker 1: that you don that crest aftermarket because this used to
Speaker 1: be this used to be a broken ring. How so well,
Speaker 1: a gentleman came in had it in his nethers. I
Speaker 1: took it off and now I probably present it wo man. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: real quick, think about this. There's a chance, unless he
Speaker 1: was buried with it, that ring is out there somewhere. God,
Speaker 1: I hope. So if you have Walter Freeman's cockering necklace,
Speaker 1: I would pay good money to have it. I don't
Speaker 1: know what I would do with it. We'll find a
Speaker 1: use for it. If you could start collecting things from
Speaker 1: your episodes and you'd be like the Collector and Guardians
Speaker 1: of the Galaxy in the Marvel universe. But you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's actually from the episode where we talk about, because
Speaker 1: that ring is gotta be I bet somebody doesn't even
Speaker 1: know what they have. Or if I get a TV
Speaker 1: show that would be that would be the premises me
Speaker 1: hunting down artifacts of terrible people will start with like
Speaker 1: an original copy of one of Hitler's favorite, uh fantasy novels.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, yeah, Saddam Hussein's typewriter, you know, all
Speaker 1: the all the all the great, all the hits, Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard's I don't know, uh boat yeah, or like that
Speaker 1: first episode I did where we talked about the Nazis
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, like even an old like Lemley's like movie
Speaker 1: cars o hell yeah yeah, yeah, the city of Pittsburgh. Man,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things to collect. Okay, sorry I
Speaker 1: have derailed this, but that that I mean, how could
Speaker 1: I not? We just went filing tale. Yeah. So. Walter
Speaker 1: spent a year in Europe, doing medical residences in France
Speaker 1: and performing medical testing on animals. The highlight of his
Speaker 1: trip was watching the autopsy of an elephant. He was
Speaker 1: fascinated by the four hour task of opening the creature's
Speaker 1: skull to remove its brain. Walter's first thought was that
Speaker 1: a jackhammer would have been the ideal tool. To remove it.
Speaker 1: But this thought, pro says, spawned a lifelong fascination in
Speaker 1: finding unique ways to break into skulls and access brains.
Speaker 1: He is into that do what you love, the money
Speaker 1: will follow. His first major job came courtesy of his grandfather, Keene,
Speaker 1: who used his connections to get his grandson a gig
Speaker 1: as the senior medical officer in charge of St. Elizabeth's
Speaker 1: Hospital in Washington, d C. This was a psychiatric hospital,
Speaker 1: and working there gave Walter a direct look into the
Speaker 1: horrific ways nineteen twenties America treated the mentally unwell. St.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth was essentially a giant box filled warehouse from the
Speaker 1: end of Raiders of the Lost Arc, but filled with
Speaker 1: sick people instead of antiquities. There were very few real
Speaker 1: treatments for psychiatric disorders, so patients were just locked in
Speaker 1: there together until they either died or lied well enough
Speaker 1: to claim that they had had a spontaneous remission. That
Speaker 1: was that was healthcare back then. Oh yeah, your head sick, huh, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna put you in a miserable box until you
Speaker 1: decide you're healthy. Yeah yeah. Walter or Freeman found this
Speaker 1: new charge horrifying. He was sickened by the forty inmates
Speaker 1: of his asylum, and he wrote the slouching figures, the
Speaker 1: vacant stare or averted eyes, the shabby clothing and footwear,
Speaker 1: the general and tidiness all aroused rejection rather than sympathy
Speaker 1: or interest. So he's horrified and not sympathetic with these people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel bad for him at all. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're just he's just disgusted by them. Now, since
Speaker 1: the inmates of this asylum were too pitiful to deserve
Speaker 1: Walter's sympathy, he instead focused on learning about the brain
Speaker 1: of the psychotic, as he called it, which is again
Speaker 1: was like the general it's a specific term now, it
Speaker 1: was just the general term for anyone that was like
Speaker 1: not fitting into society back you couldn't conform. Yeah, Walter's
Speaker 1: goal was less to alleviate discomfort and more to help
Speaker 1: these people return to life as productive members of capitalist society. Quote.
Speaker 1: I looked around me at the hundreds of patients and thought,
Speaker 1: what a waste of manpower and woman power. So again,
Speaker 1: not particularly sympathetic to their suffering. He is very gender inclusive. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Towards this end, he experimented with differing oxygen levels and
Speaker 1: their impacts on the brain of manic people. He also
Speaker 1: pioneered a new easier method of collecting spinal taps from
Speaker 1: the lobotomist. Instead of recruiting help to secure patients in
Speaker 1: a deep bend while sitting then inserting the needle of
Speaker 1: a collection syringe between the vertebra, Freeman employed what he
Speaker 1: was fond of calling the jiffy spinal tap. Without assistance
Speaker 1: from other staff members. Freeman directed patients to sit backward
Speaker 1: on a chair and deeply bend their neck over the
Speaker 1: chair back, carefully navigating the opening at the base of
Speaker 1: this goal. He then pushed a needle into a reservoir
Speaker 1: of spinal fluid located just inside but perilously close to
Speaker 1: the base of the brain. Even a slight error in
Speaker 1: the insertion of the needle could permanently injure the patient.
Speaker 1: So Walt, he's just showing off, and this this risk
Speaker 1: was worth because it allowed him to work alone without
Speaker 1: close collaboration with colleagues. Um now a mature adult, Walter
Speaker 1: was still very much a loner, and he preferred his
Speaker 1: own professional company to acting as part of a team,
Speaker 1: even when that went meant a greater risk to the aation.
Speaker 1: Walter opened a private practice while working at St. Elizabeth's
Speaker 1: to further his research, and also took a job as
Speaker 1: a professor of neurology at George Washington University. By the
Speaker 1: early nineteen thirties, he had a well earned reputation as
Speaker 1: a psychiatric pioneer. Now, Walter was largely responsible for the
Speaker 1: introduction of several exciting new treatments, insulin shock therapy, which
Speaker 1: plunged patients into insulin shock to try and correct schizophrenic symptoms.
Speaker 1: He also experimented with metrosol shock therapy and electro convulsive therapy.
Speaker 1: The essential goal of all these treatments was the same
Speaker 1: to slap sick people out of their issues by horribly
Speaker 1: traumatizing their system. So he's that kind of doctor. He's like, Ah,
Speaker 1: these people have a problem. We just need to funk
Speaker 1: them up enough that they they get their ship together.
Speaker 1: The only time I know of something like this working
Speaker 1: is in heat stroke, because you instantly need to be
Speaker 1: put into an ice tub right away, Like we need
Speaker 1: to shock you out of the thing you're in. But
Speaker 1: the idea that we could take anything psychologically and essentially
Speaker 1: smack you out of it through one form of mild
Speaker 1: torture or another is insane. Who did this ever work
Speaker 1: enough that somebody was like, I think this is the
Speaker 1: way to do it, you know. Um, So what There's
Speaker 1: a couple of things going on here. One of them
Speaker 1: is that electro convulsive therapy is still at a very
Speaker 1: small scale used today. There are certain people with certain
Speaker 1: fairly rare problems that it can help. So I'm sure
Speaker 1: there were some people who had very severe psychiatric distress
Speaker 1: who were helped by the electro convulsive therapy a tiny
Speaker 1: fraction of the total, and I'm sure there was a
Speaker 1: larger number who were while they had issues, were also
Speaker 1: able to realize like, oh my god, they're gonna keep
Speaker 1: torturing me if I don't pretend to be better, And
Speaker 1: so they would just like, okay, i'll be better. I won't.
Speaker 1: I won't kind of I won't let you know I'm suffering.
Speaker 1: Isn't that kind of like the mouse in the maze?
Speaker 1: Oh I just got to stop this and so that
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen to me anymore. Yeah, but you're learning
Speaker 1: through like not you're learning or just like have love
Speaker 1: and dog type ship of like this just happens to
Speaker 1: you every time. So you just learned to like stop
Speaker 1: being loud, but nothing's changed. Yeah, that's a kind of
Speaker 1: I think what goes on with a lot of these people.
Speaker 1: It's a mix of the tiny amount who like legitimately
Speaker 1: do benefit from it because electric convulsive therapy can be
Speaker 1: helpful and a larger number who were like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is awful, I'll just stop complaining. Yes, I don't want
Speaker 1: to go through this anymore. Um now. It was nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty five when Walter Freeman first ran into the treatment
Speaker 1: that would come to define his practice and the great
Speaker 1: bulk of his adult life. That year, he attended a
Speaker 1: presentation in London by a researcher who had experimented with
Speaker 1: damaging the frontal lobes of chimpanzees just to see what happened.
Speaker 1: The results were more or less what you'd expect. These
Speaker 1: brain damage chimps became quiet, listless, inactive. Freeman and a
Speaker 1: Portuguese neurologists us money is, we're both fascinated by this.
Speaker 1: Mona is right away headed back home to Portugal to
Speaker 1: experiment with severing the frontal lobes of human beings. The
Speaker 1: thinking was that if this procedure could calm chimpanzees down,
Speaker 1: it might have the same effect on people suffering from
Speaker 1: a mental illness that led to radical swings in personality
Speaker 1: and mood, stuff like a bipolar disorders exactly, seizure disorders
Speaker 1: and stuff, a whole bunch of different things, because again,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that we now recognize our separate
Speaker 1: things were all lumped together back in that day. Um
Speaker 1: So if you were like a schizophrenic, or if you
Speaker 1: had a seizure disorder, or if you were bipolar, they
Speaker 1: might just say, lump all those people together is the
Speaker 1: same thing. You know. They weren't great at this yet. Uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty six, Antonio Monez had perfected his treatment,
Speaker 1: the leucotomy, which involved drilling two small holes in the
Speaker 1: side of the head in order to sever connective tissue
Speaker 1: that attached the frontal lobe to the rest of the brain. Now,
Speaker 1: at the time, there were two main theories of psychiatric illness.
Speaker 1: The first, which was pushed by guys like Freud, was
Speaker 1: that psychiatric ailments were all basically the result of buried memories,
Speaker 1: misplaced desires, past traumas, things that you could sit down
Speaker 1: and work out with a psychotherapist over a small mountain
Speaker 1: of cocaine and uncomfortable couch. The other theory was that
Speaker 1: these illnesses were caused by emotional signals from the brain
Speaker 1: that were so strong they simply overwhelmed a person. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously neither theory is entirely right um, but the theory
Speaker 1: that guys like Freeman would adopt, which was that you
Speaker 1: know these it was a bunch of signals from the brain,
Speaker 1: was closer to right than Freud's theory because it explains
Speaker 1: stuff like you know, um uh, seizure disorders or like
Speaker 1: schizophrenia and stuff which are not You can't talk therapy
Speaker 1: someone with schizophrenia out of having issues like it's a
Speaker 1: problem with like signals their brain is sending and they
Speaker 1: need some sorts of medication. I think sometimes surgery helps.
Speaker 1: But like so, Freeman is on the right track. What
Speaker 1: he and other scientists who like adopt this school of
Speaker 1: thought are realizing is that you can't talk your way
Speaker 1: through all of your mental problems, which is correct. There
Speaker 1: are mental problems that have to be dealt with on
Speaker 1: like more of a chemical physical level. So that's what
Speaker 1: I say when I say he was he was right
Speaker 1: about sort of what the issues were. Um but then
Speaker 1: we get into what he decided the treatment should be,
Speaker 1: which was not correct. But he was on the right
Speaker 1: track when he like figured out like what was going
Speaker 1: on with people where he was closer to write than
Speaker 1: a lot of mainstream doctors. So Maniza's leucotomy seemed to
Speaker 1: provide relief to a number of patients. And I should
Speaker 1: note that there are variants of this procedure we used today.
Speaker 1: Patients suffering from some types of seizure disorders sometimes have
Speaker 1: parts of the brain disconnected from one another to stop
Speaker 1: or reduce the frequency of said seizures. We still do
Speaker 1: use brain surgery. That's kind of an evolution of the
Speaker 1: leucotomy to treat people today, and it can be very
Speaker 1: helpful to again a very small number of people who
Speaker 1: suffer with these disorders. Um. So Moniz was experimenting with
Speaker 1: real medicine and he was very responsible with the implications
Speaker 1: of his treatment. When he received the Nobel Prize for
Speaker 1: it in nineteen forty nine, he insisted the leucotomy was
Speaker 1: only to be used as a treatment of last resort
Speaker 1: when absolutely nothing else could provide a patient with relief.
Speaker 1: So Monez not gonna say is a bad guy. He's
Speaker 1: one of the early experimenters with what would come to
Speaker 1: be known as a lobotomy. But he's he's doing it
Speaker 1: because number one, he recognizes it does help in some cases,
Speaker 1: and he's he's very clear about like, we only do
Speaker 1: this if there's no other chance of them living a
Speaker 1: normal life, or if we want to funk with a chimpanzee.
Speaker 1: That was the other guy. Oh that's right, sorry, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Moniz just watched that and was like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: this might best. Yeah. Now. Walter Freeman paid attention to
Speaker 1: the work of Antonio Moniz, but he was not convinced
Speaker 1: that the leucotomy ought to be a last resort for
Speaker 1: suffering people. As the manager of an asylum, he was
Speaker 1: deeply frustrated by how much time and manpower it took
Speaker 1: to subdue patients dealing with psychotic episodes, schizophrenic breaks, manic faces, etcetera.
Speaker 1: The idea that all this could be calmed by the
Speaker 1: just chopping up their brains was deeply appealing to him.
Speaker 1: So start, yeah, yeah, that'll that'll make it. Wait my job.
Speaker 1: So I'm sick of what if I just break them?
Speaker 1: Line them up? So Freeman developed a modification of moniz
Speaker 1: is pers Sieger and renamed it a lobotomy in much
Speaker 1: the same way as Oreos modified the hydrox cookie, and
Speaker 1: like Oreos, Freeman's procedure was destined to capture the vast
Speaker 1: majority of the market share for such a product. Like Oreos,
Speaker 1: you gotta get to that middle good stuff and get
Speaker 1: that out. You got you gotta get that out now.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote now from Jack L. High, who wrote
Speaker 1: The Lobotomist and also wrote this piece for The Washington Post.
Speaker 1: To him, the intoxicating thing about psycho surgery mon iss
Speaker 1: coin term for psychiatric surgery, was its potential to sever
Speaker 1: the links between the over excited emotions of an unhealthy
Speaker 1: thalamus and the behavioral functions of the prefrontal lobes of
Speaker 1: the brain. If it worked, the destruction of these nerve
Speaker 1: fibers would prevent the thalamus from poisoning patients. Thinking he
Speaker 1: absorbed the details of Moniss work, and with neurosurgeon Watts
Speaker 1: became figuring out how to adapt the Portuguese physicians techniques.
Speaker 1: Freeman and Watts used brains from the hospital Morgue to
Speaker 1: practice the coring of sections of the prefrontal lobes with
Speaker 1: a lukatom, which is the device they'd used for that.
Speaker 1: But the summer of nineteen thirty six, they were ready
Speaker 1: for a live patient, a Miss Hammett from Topeka, Kansas. Now.
Speaker 1: Ms Hammett was sixty three years old. She suffered from depression.
Speaker 1: She had frequent hysterical fits and difficulties sleeping. Freeman talked
Speaker 1: with her and concluded that a lobotomy was the only
Speaker 1: way for her to avoid spending the rest of her
Speaker 1: life in a mental hospital. Much of the impetus behind
Speaker 1: this seems to have been her husband, who was tired
Speaker 1: of dealing with a wife who needed help herself rather
Speaker 1: than just preparing meals for him and staying quiet. Freeman
Speaker 1: and his new partner Watts, schedule Miss Hammett for an
Speaker 1: appointment on September nineteen thirty six. Now, the first lobotomy
Speaker 1: did not start off well. Miss Hammett tried to back
Speaker 1: out when she learned the procedure would require her to
Speaker 1: shave her head. Many of her mental health issues focused
Speaker 1: around an obsession with her thinning hair, so this was
Speaker 1: obviously a matter of grave concern for her. WHOA, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're doing the one thing she's already upset about. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So Freeman and Watts assured her they would only have
Speaker 1: to shave off a few small sections of her scalp.
Speaker 1: This was a lie, obviously. Once they forcibly anesthetized her,
Speaker 1: they shaved her bald. Freeman recorded that her last words
Speaker 1: before going underwear, Who is that man? What does he
Speaker 1: want here? What is he going to do to me?
Speaker 1: Tell him to go away? Oh? I don't want to
Speaker 1: see him. Yeah, Well that's how crazy people talk. So
Speaker 1: still I don't think that. Oh yeah, that's him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think she's very reasonable. That's my point. Once, once
Speaker 1: you've been like labeled, we're going to do this to you,
Speaker 1: no matter what you say, They're like, well you would
Speaker 1: talk like that, You're a crazy You need her a
Speaker 1: looney loony. With Freeman watching, Wat's drilled six holes a
Speaker 1: top miss Hammett's skull and inserted a luca toom, a
Speaker 1: device that essentially hold the brain into each hole, both
Speaker 1: doctors worked together on leisuroning the brain, with Watts the
Speaker 1: actual surgeon, managing the whole affair, and as odd as
Speaker 1: it sounds, the lobotomy seems to have helped Miss Hammett,
Speaker 1: At least she and her husband both reported that it helped.
Speaker 1: Freeman wrote in his autobiography, she survived five years, according
Speaker 1: to Mr Hammett, the happiest years of her life. As
Speaker 1: she expressed it, she could go to the theater and
Speaker 1: really enjoy the play without thinking of what her back
Speaker 1: hair looked like or whether her shoes pinched. And it
Speaker 1: is entirely possible that this is an accurate representation of
Speaker 1: how Miss Hammett felt. Many of Dr Freeman's lobotomy patients
Speaker 1: experienced relief from some of their symptoms. That said, even
Speaker 1: the positive experiences with lobotomies are clouded by deeply disturbing
Speaker 1: questions of consent and structures of oppression. They're saying speaking
Speaker 1: of sorry, sorry, I just really they're saying it actually worked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she she experienced relief that was not wildly uncommon with
Speaker 1: his patients. Yeah, but if she's worried about her shoes
Speaker 1: and stuff, it's kind of sounds to me like, and
Speaker 1: I know we're near a professional and so please take
Speaker 1: this with the grain ofshal anyone who hears my voice
Speaker 1: that maybe she suffers some some sort of like O. C.
Speaker 1: D she was like worried about and so the lobotomy
Speaker 1: just made her not really care about anything. So they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: things are better. Well, yep, no, you just don't care
Speaker 1: about anything. That's not I guess, I guess you're not
Speaker 1: doing the thing you did. But I don't know if
Speaker 1: that falls into category better. But but for them at
Speaker 1: the time, they were saying that for them at the time,
Speaker 1: this woman was complaining. Now the woman's not complaining. We
Speaker 1: fixed her. It's a different Yeah, we're going to get
Speaker 1: into that a little bit more and how problematic all
Speaker 1: this was. But again, it's important you know that at
Speaker 1: the time this looked to again the men who were
Speaker 1: the only ones whose opinions mattered in this situation, as
Speaker 1: if they were making people like Mrs Hammett better. Um,
Speaker 1: now you know what will make you better, Daniel van Kirk.
Speaker 1: The products and services that advertise on this show. Nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can we go to them? Can I learn about him?
Speaker 1: We can? Here's uh capitalism lobotomy. We're back now. Uh,
Speaker 1: As I said before we rolled out the positive experiences
Speaker 1: with lobotomies that you read about when you kind of
Speaker 1: read about these early operations. Um, we're all clouded by
Speaker 1: very disturbing questions of consent and also structures of oppression
Speaker 1: that existed back then and still exist today. During my research,
Speaker 1: I came across a story Corps interview with one of
Speaker 1: Walter Freeman's patients, Patricia Mowen and her husband Patricia with
Speaker 1: Her husband's name is Glynn. By the way, Patricia was
Speaker 1: lobotomized in nineteen sixty two, and I'm going to read
Speaker 1: the transcript of this husband and wife talking about her procedure.
Speaker 1: And again, this is considered to be like one of
Speaker 1: the stories of like a success. But I'll read this
Speaker 1: to you and you tell me if you think there's
Speaker 1: something fucked up going on here, but I will. Glenn Mowen,
Speaker 1: my name is Glynn Owen. I am seventy nine years old.
Speaker 1: I signed the release for Pat's lobotomy. Patricia Mowen, we
Speaker 1: have not talked about it since I had the lobotomy.
Speaker 1: I don't think ever. My husband is not a great communicator, Glenn.
Speaker 1: I don't talk to her any more than I have
Speaker 1: to Patricia. Glenn, be nice. Both laugh. We've been married
Speaker 1: about thirteen years and it just started. I cried all
Speaker 1: the time. I was just mentally no good, Glenn. One
Speaker 1: night I came home and she said, well, I've done
Speaker 1: it now. She'd taken a whole bottle of some kind
Speaker 1: of pills. Patricia. That's when the doctor decided it was time. Glenn.
Speaker 1: He told me this was the last resort. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what else to do, Patricia. Dr Freeman said, you
Speaker 1: can come out of this vegetable, or you can come
Speaker 1: out dead. And I guess I was miserable enough that
Speaker 1: I didn't care. Glenn. I was kind of worried because
Speaker 1: of the operation of severing a nerve in the brain.
Speaker 1: It sounded kind of wild to me, Patricia. He was
Speaker 1: afraid he was going to lose his cook, Glenn, and
Speaker 1: I don't like to cook. Patricia. I remember nothing after
Speaker 1: I saw Dr Freeman. I don't remember going to the hospital,
Speaker 1: or having it done, or how long I was there.
Speaker 1: That's all gone, Glenn. We were coming back from San
Speaker 1: Jose after the operation, and pat informed me that she
Speaker 1: couldn't wait to get home because she wanted to file
Speaker 1: for divorce. Patricia. I don't remember that at all. I
Speaker 1: don't think I said it, Glenn. I think I just
Speaker 1: went on driving and ignored the situation. Began to wonder myself,
Speaker 1: how much good did this operation accomplish? Really, I can
Speaker 1: see no changes in most areas, except she is much
Speaker 1: easier to get along with Patricia. You didn't see any
Speaker 1: change in the way I kept the house or the
Speaker 1: way I Glenn. No, Patricia, I was more a free
Speaker 1: person after I had it, just not so concerned about things.
Speaker 1: I just went home and started living, I guess is
Speaker 1: the best way I can say it. I was able
Speaker 1: to get back to taking care of things and cooking
Speaker 1: and shopping in that kind of thing. Glenn delighted it.
Speaker 1: The way it's turned out, it's been a good life. WHOA, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's there's a lot going on there. My favorite I
Speaker 1: hope on Glenn's tombstone, who we know is definitely dead
Speaker 1: by now. It says I ignored it and kept driving.
Speaker 1: I ignored it and kept driving. That's probably how he
Speaker 1: lived a lot of his life with her, until he
Speaker 1: had to deal with her ass because she wouldn't do
Speaker 1: the things she was supposed to and kept complaining about
Speaker 1: wanting more pills. She wasn't happy cooking and shopping. So
Speaker 1: we drilled a hole in the brain and then it
Speaker 1: was fine. You know what, I'm also going to claim
Speaker 1: ignorance here, my friend, I was under the assumption before
Speaker 1: we started this that if you got a lobotomy, you
Speaker 1: were just a shell of a person, that you were
Speaker 1: a vegetable or you died. Like, uh, that happened a lot.
Speaker 1: But but some people just kind of went into like
Speaker 1: in a I don't know if you forks the right word,
Speaker 1: but a like just a las a fair feeling towards
Speaker 1: life after a lobotom Like they still were very cognitive,
Speaker 1: they just didn't really have any argument nerves left. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's its separating the frontal lobe in the way that
Speaker 1: they did kind of separates you from your concerns. In
Speaker 1: some ways, it stopped people from feeling or thinking as much.
Speaker 1: Very agreeable. Yeah, that was kind of the best case
Speaker 1: scenario with some of these people. Um, but some they
Speaker 1: did they detached too much or go too deep, and
Speaker 1: that's when you get catatonic. Yeah, we'll get into that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it wasn't an exact science, and they
Speaker 1: won't be always good at it. That just blew me
Speaker 1: away to hear that exchange, because I've been sitting here
Speaker 1: the whole time thinking. Every lobotomy ends with just a
Speaker 1: feeling of like, no, no, you're gone. A lot of
Speaker 1: these people went on to live productive lives. A lot
Speaker 1: of them were rendered catatonic. It kind of depended on
Speaker 1: how the operation when, like the thing is, brains are weird.
Speaker 1: I've known people who have been shot through the head
Speaker 1: with rifles, um, and we're fine. Definitely not getting a
Speaker 1: rifle in the studio then yeah, well, I mean they
Speaker 1: would up fine, we could just It's just it's kind
Speaker 1: of a crapshoot with brains. It's it's wild the amount
Speaker 1: of things that they can go through, uh and suffer
Speaker 1: no noticeable effects. And it's wild the number of things
Speaker 1: that can happen to them that seem minor and just
Speaker 1: change the person forever. Like it's a fucking crap shoot
Speaker 1: at the look at the NFL exactly now. Mrs Hammett's
Speaker 1: lobotomy in nineteen thirty six proved to be the beginning
Speaker 1: of a decade's long career carving into the brains of
Speaker 1: human beings. He and Watts were one of medicine's most
Speaker 1: dynamic duos. Following that operation, they established an office at
Speaker 1: a home in Washington, d C and gradually refined their technique,
Speaker 1: replacing Moniz's luca toom with an object Jack l Hi
Speaker 1: describes as resembling a butter knife. They also switched around
Speaker 1: the positioning of the holes from which they cut into
Speaker 1: the brain. When patient symptoms persisted, Watson Freeman would perform
Speaker 1: multiple lobotomies and make deeper cuts into the brain. One patient,
Speaker 1: a lawyer suffering from alcoholism, escaped the hospital after his
Speaker 1: operation and was found drunk in a downtown bar. One
Speaker 1: patient showed up after his surgery and threatened to murder
Speaker 1: the doctors two poled guns when Freeman recommended they undergo lobotomies,
Speaker 1: so it was not always a smooth process. From early on,
Speaker 1: Freeman viewed proper pr as critical to gaining widespread adoption
Speaker 1: for his new technique. He and Watts started setting up
Speaker 1: a lobotomy booth at the annual A m A Convention
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine, crafting displays designed to draw the
Speaker 1: attention of journalists rather than impressing other doctors. He later wrote,
Speaker 1: I found the technique of getting noticed in the papers.
Speaker 1: It was to arrive a day or two ahead of
Speaker 1: the opening of the convention and installed the exhibit in
Speaker 1: the most graphic manner, and then be alert for prowling newsmen.
Speaker 1: Now jackal High notes that Freeman used handheld clackers to
Speaker 1: get the attention of reporters with loud noises. He and
Speaker 1: Watts even lobotomized a monkey in nineteen thirty nine. This
Speaker 1: spectacular event dominated coverage of the convention. Freeman wrote that
Speaker 1: night our monkey died, but Watson I made the headlines
Speaker 1: even though we did not get an award, and so
Speaker 1: so begins as press. I mean, that's what he's going
Speaker 1: for here, that's what he's going for. Well, the monkey died,
Speaker 1: but people seem to be interested. Now. Of the first
Speaker 1: six twenty three surgeries Watson Freeman carried out had what
Speaker 1: they described as good results, were fair, and were poor.
Speaker 1: Three percent died during or immediately after the surgery, and
Speaker 1: if you take Freeman's word for it, those are good results.
Speaker 1: More than half of people had like a good result
Speaker 1: of the operation, particularly considering these tended to be patients
Speaker 1: who had exhausted conventional treatment options. However, Freeman never went
Speaker 1: into detail about what he considered to be a good result,
Speaker 1: nor did he update his results when patients relapsed which
Speaker 1: was extremely common, with the result of that monkey died,
Speaker 1: so he was he was because yeah yeah now. Nurses
Speaker 1: reported that patients of the duo often needed to relearn
Speaker 1: how to eat and handle other basic tasks. They soiled themselves,
Speaker 1: flirted bizarrely with orderlies, and would sit staring off into
Speaker 1: the distance for hours on end. Walter Freeman considered these
Speaker 1: positive changes. The fact that lobotomy patients were dull, quiet, uncoordinated,
Speaker 1: and lazy was he felt an improvement over manic episodes
Speaker 1: and excessive activity. Many officials at mental hospitals felt the
Speaker 1: same way. Freeman. Watt's patients were much easier to deal
Speaker 1: with on a long term basis, since many of them
Speaker 1: just sat around quietly. By Walter had started to experiment
Speaker 1: with new methods of lobotomy. He was frustrated by the
Speaker 1: fact that the procedure required a skilled neurosurgeon. That meant
Speaker 1: he could only perform the operation when Watts was around,
Speaker 1: which dramatically limited the number of people he could properly lobotomize.
Speaker 1: This was a problem because he'd come to believe that
Speaker 1: lobotomies worked best for patients in the early stages of
Speaker 1: their illness. If people waited too long. He feared the
Speaker 1: lobotomy might not really help. So he's like, we got
Speaker 1: to get into this ship faster. This needs to be
Speaker 1: like the first thing we're doing first. You're feeling down today,
Speaker 1: sitting this chair and shave your head. I'll be right
Speaker 1: there now. Walter started looking into the research of other doctors,
Speaker 1: and he found in a town in surgeon named Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: Fiamberti Armano had developed a new procedure for reaching the
Speaker 1: brain without drilling careful holes in the skull. Instead, Armano
Speaker 1: broke into the skull through a soft bone at the
Speaker 1: rear of the ice socket. Working on corpses, Freeman developed
Speaker 1: a method of accessing the frontal lobe of the brain
Speaker 1: through the ice socket using an ice pick from his kitchen.
Speaker 1: Working in secret so Watts wouldn't find out, Freeman started
Speaker 1: performing solo lobotomies in January of ninety six. He operated
Speaker 1: out of the office he and Watch shared, but during
Speaker 1: hours when he knew his partner would not be in
Speaker 1: the building, Freeman ice picked nine human brains in short order,
Speaker 1: sending his patients home in a taxi cab. Next. According
Speaker 1: to The Washington Post, Freeman later wrote that during his
Speaker 1: tenth transorbital surgery, he called Watts to his office to
Speaker 1: assess the operation. Wats later claimed, however, that he entered
Speaker 1: Freeman's office unsummoned and found Freeman pushing an ice pick
Speaker 1: in the ice socket of an unconscious man. Freeman audaciously
Speaker 1: asked Wats hold the ice picks so Freeman could take
Speaker 1: a photograph. Whichever account is true, no one disputes the
Speaker 1: result of this encounter. Whatt's threatened to break off their
Speaker 1: partnership if Freeman persisted in performing lobotomies himself and treating
Speaker 1: them as office procedures done without surgical gloves or sterile draping.
Speaker 1: For the remainder of his association with Watts, Freeman did
Speaker 1: these operations outside the office, So that's cool now, Watson.
Speaker 1: Freeman would later fall out professionally over the issue of
Speaker 1: transorbital lobotomies. Although Watts retained a deep respect for his partner,
Speaker 1: he couldn't get over his belief that brain surgery ought
Speaker 1: to only be carried out by a competent brain surgeon,
Speaker 1: not random guys with an ice pick. Controversial what a
Speaker 1: crazy stance, and Freedman was like, you are far out there. No,
Speaker 1: have you seen this ice pick? Children should be able
Speaker 1: to fix cars, and non brain surgeons should be able
Speaker 1: to put ice picks through people's eyes. I believe that now.
Speaker 1: A book the two men authored on the subject of
Speaker 1: lobotomies includes this paragraph. The authors regret to announce that
Speaker 1: they have been unable to reach an agreement on the
Speaker 1: subject of transorbital lobotomy. Freeman believes that he has proved
Speaker 1: the method to be simple, quick, effective, and safe to
Speaker 1: entrust to the psychiatrist. Watts believes that any procedure involving
Speaker 1: cutting off the brain tissue is a major operation and
Speaker 1: should remain in the hands of a neurological surgeon. This
Speaker 1: is when you're in a relationship with somebody and you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know why we're fighting about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why we've been fighting about this? I've just I've just
Speaker 1: ice pick, and some motherfucker's like, why are you angry? Right,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be having this fight. Yeah. This book, psycho
Speaker 1: Surgery and the Treatment of Mental Disorders and Intractable Pain,
Speaker 1: made an enormous splash in the world of medicine when
Speaker 1: it was first published in nineteen fifty the Tomb featured
Speaker 1: language not often used in works of medicine, like the
Speaker 1: term scrawny frayed cats used to refer to a group
Speaker 1: of patients. This lurd pros, along with the gaush marketing
Speaker 1: technique used by Freeman, who attract the press, alienated many
Speaker 1: mainstream medical professionals, but the book was popular and cemented
Speaker 1: Freeman's status is a radical physician working on the cutting,
Speaker 1: perhaps poking edge of medical science. On the eve of
Speaker 1: his fifty second birthday, he wrote, I have a feeling
Speaker 1: of competence and assurance that is almost grandiose. Maybe it
Speaker 1: comes from superb health, and maybe from the fruition of
Speaker 1: dreams that have proved within my grasp. But anyhow, I'm
Speaker 1: sitting on top of the world. So that's good. He's happy.
Speaker 1: What do you want? In our next episode, We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the second phase of Walter Freeman's career.
Speaker 1: We're also going to discuss the most famous patient he
Speaker 1: and Watts ever operated on, the poster victim of lobotomy
Speaker 1: and sister to President John F. Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy. But
Speaker 1: right now, Daniel van Kirk, it's time for you to
Speaker 1: plug some plug doubles. I want to let everybody know
Speaker 1: I have my first comedy album coming out. It's on
Speaker 1: It's on Blonde Medicine. That's the label, and it will
Speaker 1: drop on November fift Friday, November. It's called Thanks Diane.
Speaker 1: I recorded it in Los Angeles at the UCB Theater
Speaker 1: and uh, if this is before when you're hearing this,
Speaker 1: you can go to Daniel van Kirk dot com and
Speaker 1: pre order, or us go to the iTunes Store app
Speaker 1: on your phone, specifically the iTunes Store app, and you'll
Speaker 1: be able to pre order there. But on eleven fifteen
Speaker 1: or any time there after, you can get it anywhere
Speaker 1: that you get your music or listen to such things.
Speaker 1: I should say music, but it feels like it's also
Speaker 1: for comedy, but it's called Thanks Diane. And go to
Speaker 1: Daniel van Kirk for all my tour dates as well
Speaker 1: as my own podcast, pen Pals or Dumb People Tone
Speaker 1: and I'm Robert Evans uh and you can find me
Speaker 1: here on the podcast you're currently listening to, so please
Speaker 1: keep listening to this podcast. You can find our sources
Speaker 1: on behind the Bastards dot com. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram and at bastards pod. You can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at I right. Okay, Uh, you
Speaker 1: can also find a lobotomy if you show up at
Speaker 1: my door and pay me forty five dollars. I have
Speaker 1: an ice pick, so you cannot be doing these. Brain
Speaker 1: surgeons need to do these. I feel like anyone can
Speaker 1: do these if they have an ice pick. Having this argument,
Speaker 1: I I feel like Daniel, Daniel, I respect your opinion
Speaker 1: on this, but I disagree with it well, and I
Speaker 1: respect your expertise, but I think you need to wear gloves.
Speaker 1: Oh gloves you mean cowards hands. All right, that's the
Speaker 1: fucking episode. Buy a T shirt on t public and
Speaker 1: go off into the world and perform unlicensed lobotomies or not. Nope, Sophie,
Speaker 1: we're pro lobotomy now or not.