Part One: The Bastard Who Invented The Lobotomy

my man, I'm wonderful. Daniel. Go ahead, no, no, oh, I'll just say I've I've been up for two hours, so I feel it's very impressive. Do you do you like mornings? I do not, But I've recently found out that I am able to get so many more things done the earlier I get up, which would seem to be very simple math, but nothing that I had personally made any efforts to experience until recently in my life. So I would say, on average nowadays, I'm up around

before eight, maybe sometimes six thirty. But I am not a morning person. I hate sunrises. I love sunset. Robert would say six, that's the middle of the night. Well, that is when I went to bed last night, they're about maybe five. Well, I appreciate you making this effort. Then, man, that's crazy. My sleep schedule is still funked up from the flight. Sure, now, Daniel, we've we've established that that you're sort of ambivalent towards mornings, leaning towards not liking them.

How do you feel about brains? How do you feel about your brain? I feel pretty good about it. H Yeah, it's it's held up pretty well. My memory is still very good, and I haven't gotten to the point where I have to have a calendar. I would say I use it for about fifty of my stuff. I should be using it for a lot more, but mine's held up so far. I think well, I think most people

like their brain, except for the moments when they hate them. Um. And I think that probably for the listeners of the show is statistically have spent like about fifty of their waking hours not liking their brain. Because this is a show for depressed people who like to hear about terrible things. Um. As a general rule, that's our that's our demo, isn't it, Sophie. I hope not. And I screwed up so I mean

me too. Maybe I'm describing the author of the show and it's it's uh, it's primary cast more than the listeners. I hope the listeners are happy, but I'm making an assumption here either way, you're here for them. As of a two thousand seventeen study, but the Journal of Psychiatric Services, more than eight million Americans suffer from severe psychological distress.

Now this is a blanket term for quote, feelings of sadness, worthlessness, restlessness that are hazardous enough to impair physical well being. That sounds pretty familiar to me, um, And that number doesn't include all the Americans struggling with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, psychosis, depression, and a whole galaxy of other brain based thing of the jigs to deal with. And as some extent, it's always been this way. Huge chunks of people have always

had brains that don't let them comfortably interface with mainstream society. Now, we're not great at helping people with mental illnesses in two thousand nineteen, but a few decades ago we were much worse at it. And today we're going to talk about the man who was perhaps the very very worst of all at it. So you know, the name Walter Jackson Freeman. The second I do now he invented lobotomies, and that's who we're talking about today. They're just they're like, well,

we'll just remove it. Yep, We'll just we'll just we'll just scramble it up a little bit. Actually, yeah, oh, you yell too much. We'll remove it. Oh you had an unwanted pregnancy. We'll remove it, and not just the pregnancy part. No, actually we will keep the pregnancy, but we'll scramble that brain up. Yeah. And I've heard, well, I'm sure we'll touch on some of them, but I've just heard horror stories of like, well, we had a sister and then she just wouldn't stop arguing with our parents,

so she went away. She liked boys, so we stuck a needle in a brain. Oh what a time it was. Yeah, Okay, man, I am going to bunker down for this. Yeah. My dog is a registered therapy dog if you need to pat her. Okay, great, awesome? Is she registered lobotomist, Sophie, Because I feel like there's a lot of money in that. No, but we'll look into it. We'll look into it. Walter Jackson Freeme in the second was born on November four in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Walter the First, was also

a doctor, but not a very good one. He hated the work, and he did it only grudgingly. He was like an ear nose and throat doctor, and it was said that his ideal world would have been one in which people didn't have ears, noses, or throats, so he wouldn't have to work. His son took that one next level. Then you want things just removed that you don't want to deal with that. That's what I'm gonna do, Dad, now.

Walter Jackson the seconds h grandfather, Keen Freeman, was one of the most celebrated physicians of his age and was like the first doctor who did a bunch of important things. He was a legitimate, like trailblazing medical motherfucker. So Walter Freeman the Second was a sick child, which was not unusual in an error where the average fist fight came with a better pragnosis than the average surgery. He developed in large lymph nodes when he was fourteen months old,

which his grandfather had to cut out. The surgery worked, but it permanently paralyzed some of the muscles in Walter's shoulder and head. Uh. Walter the second also underwent tons selectomy and suffered from diphtheria, scarlet fever, the measles, whooping cough, the mumps, and pink eye. I don't want to say that God definitely one of this baby dead, but I think the evidence speaks for itself. M Yeah, they tried. Yeah,

he did his best. Young Walter's first memory was of the head of a pickaxe breaking through the wall of his nursery as the result of a home demolition that got a little sloppy. Which is a pretty pretty badass first memory. You gotta give it. Oh, yeah for sure. Also, uh, not too far off of an analogy of what he would later do to people's own lives, and not too far off from a great scene in The Shining, which starred Jack Nicholson, who was also in One Flew Over

the Cuckoo's Nest movie about a lobotomy. Oh that was a good not We tied a lot of things together. U now. The wonderful biography of Walter the Lobotomist notes that he also nursed a lifelong fear of horses, but never knew why. That doesn't come up again I just think it's interesting people are terrified of something for no reason and they can't let it go. Well, I'm also afraid of horses. Okay, well that's not what we're talking about today. All right, Well you need to put that in.

You need that needs to go in the book. Are you scared of anything on like an existential level that that makes no sense to you? I don't. Well that's but if you're scared of it, doesn't it make sense to you? So not always? I don't know. I'm I'm very afraid of prison. Okay, that makes total sense. Yeah, that's what. But what it makes sense to me? But it is like, yeah, when I just think about not being able to get out of somewhere that destined to like you know, like they're like, oh, we decide. I

don't know. I don't like it. Bothers me. That shows sixty days in Have you watched that? No? That sounds like a fucking nightmare. Though. It's like they embed civilians into like a prison system. The only person that knows they're not an actual prisoner is the warden, and then the camera crew sets up as though they're doing a documentary in the prison, but they used that to do,

like their confessional talking head moments. So they interview a lot of prisoners, but none of them assumed, well, one of us isn't actually even supposed to be here, and their jobs to like last sixty days, and quite a few of them end up just getting beaten up. Yeah, that makes sense. One was bad at his cover story of what he was supposed to be in there for.

So once you just start lying to other prisoners, they assume you must be a pedophile, and that's why you're like, no fun intended kg about what you got in there for. And that didn't end well for that guy either. Once everybody was like, oh, you're a pedophile, he's like no, no, no, no no, And then they don't care about that. That's what they think, So you get beat up there. I

don't know if there is any cash price. I'm trying to think, like you would have to have to be I would only do it for enough money that I would be able to buy a cabin in the woods, Like would have to give me cabin in the woods money in order to like do that fucking thing. But that sounds like the worst. That's like it would have to be nice woods and so you for like you would do it. Five hundred is going to be the low end of that ship. I'm talking a nice cabin.

See one time I went when I toured Alcatraz, they let us go into the solitary confinement and they're like, anybody want to check it out? And then I thought, you know what, lean in on your fear. So I went in and the guys shut the door. They're like, I don't know what you call it. Probably a park ranger at this point because of what Alcatraz is, and then the tour guide whatever, and uh then he pretended that the door was stuck and he couldn't get me out.

And I did not enjoy those few very short moments that felt like very long hours. See I would I would live in Alcatraz if it could just be my house and I had a sack of rifles and an Internet connection. Um, that would be fun. I could take pot shots at Silicon Valley would be satisfying. I would sign up for that podcast. Mm hm, welcome back to Robert on the Rock. It's another episode. Okay, we should probably get back to the podcast. We were talking he

scared of horses. Now, when Walter was a small child, his family moved to an area near Rittenhouse Square, a once fancy but now slummy neighborhood. Uh and this is again in Philadelphia now. Freeman would later recall it as a rather dingy place where nursemaid's wheeled baby carriages and gossiped. Walter's family was quite well off, and he came up with maids and cooks and nanny's to attend to his

and his parents every whim. He was not overly adventurous as a child, and later wrote of himself on the whole, I think I was a sensitive, imaginative boy, docile, shut in a bit, and full of questions. His parents nicknamed him Little Walter Why Why, And the growing boy was particularly intrigued by the family business medicine. He had a good relationship with his grandfather, but almost no real friends. The only boy he played with regularly was his younger

cousin Morris. The book The Lobotomist describes their friendship as basically identical to a Calvin and hobb strip. Walter and Morris nursed a mutual contempt for girls and made grand plans for the Society for the Prevention of Useless Girls spugs for short. Disdaining the company of other children, they set up another exclusive secret society, just two members strong, which they called the wal Risk Club. Yeah, that's like the fucking Calvin and Hobbs strip. Yeah, and they got

a Transmorguar fire. Wasn't that one of the things through times? Yeah? So did I. It's kind of a bummer if you imagine this is what happened to Calvin when he grew up. I'm not doing that. Don't do that. Don't do That'll be more Hobbs. I could see Hobbs getting into this line of work, but definitely not scrambling brains now. Walter was a good student. He excelled in Latin and Greek, and he won prizes for his scholastics. He was never any good at sports, nor did he grow any more

adept with the opposite sex. As he blossomed into a teenager, he found girls bothersome and later wrote, I think I actively disliked girls until I went to college. This is all going to make so much sense later, This is all going to make so much sense immediately. Um. Walter Freeman was the oldest of six siblings, all but two of whom were boys. He did not get along well with him, nor did he particularly care for his parents. Walter would later note repeatedly that he never loved his mother.

He was only a little closer to his father, who took him and his brothers on regular hiking, fishing, and camping trips. The elder Walter hated his medical practice and considered the outdoors his only refuge. He was a weird dude. Once, when Walter the Second was caught skipping school, his father punished him by whipping himself in front of the truant officer. Wait, WHOA, Yeah, the dad whipped himself or he had Walter the Second, No, he whipped the dad whipped himself in front of the

truant officer to myself by skipping school. Yeah, and he did it in front of the cop. WHOA, Like that's that's so fucked up. It takes like you really have to process that ship because the layers fucking up the kid's head, you know that. Like I'm a truant officer. Imagine that guy. He's like, Hey, well buddy, I just want kids to go to school. Why are we doing this? All you gotta do is sign the sheet man. All you gotta do is sign the sheet that I told you he wasn't at school put me down. Why did

you bring a whip to this meeting? You? You don't need to do this. No one's asking you to do this, sir. I just wanted to know. I'm also gonna have to write you up for right for whipping yourself because I have to document that I witnessed this. He missed a day of school. This isn't really a whipping situation. I wondered what you meant when you were like, cool, I'll bring my whip. H Yeah, I have trouble getting my head around. What kind of man does that? Oh? I know?

And then I'm sure the truan officer was like I wanted the kid to leave, and then just like in Will Farrell and he's bonding down, the dad was like, let the boy watch. I feel that's horrific. That's a mind fuck. Yeah, that's a galaxy level mind fuck. Oh boy. I bet that true an officer felt bad for that. I bet in the future he was like, you know what, you need to stop skipping school, but we're not going to tell your dad any officer. Let everyone's skip. Yeah,

he was like, I'm not going through that again. I am not doing that again. So uh as is probably not a surprise hearing that Walter's father was no less awkward when it came to talking to his young adults song about sex. Years later, Walter recalled, I had been showing interest in the external anatomy of my young girl cousins with the aid of his ancient textbooks on anatomy

and gynecology illustrated with woodcuts. He dilated upon internal anatomy, reproduction, and especially venereal disease, threatening to have me followed or even tempted by operatives who would report to him. I was thoroughly uncomfortable, but remained a virgin. He never alluded to it again. So if you're a young parent out there looking to stop your kid from fucking too early, this is one way to keep them a virgin for a very long time. Yeah, or watch a racer head

but yeah, or watch your racer head. Yeah. But okay, So he he got way into his He said, straight up, I was really into my female cousins anatomy. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, he well, you know, you know that's that's fucked up. I think in an earlier age in which boys and girls did not socialize. Like you run into stories like that a lot in the early nineteen hundreds just because like you weren't hanging out with any other girls, So

like that's when people would have that. Really it's it's messed up and a symptom of some unhealthy things in the culture. But I'm not gonna say that that right, there is evidence that Walter was weird from the beginning. Maybe they were the only girls he spent any time around. And I guess so when you stay at yeah anime, to me, it's like he makes me feel like I guess I in tone that he's more preoccupied, Like it's okay to wonder what's under their clothes, but don't start

wondering what's under their skin. I think that was just sort of, um a euphemism they used because again, nobody had good vocabulary to talk about like bodies back then, because everyone was fucked up, and you know, it was an even less healthy time. There was no feveral summer or Midwestern boy autumn at which I'm currently a part of. Oh yeah, that's yeah. Midwestern boy autumn is good. Uh, Southeastern boy late summer slash early fall, which really doesn't

get going until November. Um, get a lot of them. I like slutty people, April showers. That's my favorite time of year. Slutty people, April showers. Um, there has to be a porn star named April Showers, right of course. Oh yeah, no, there's like they're okay, I hope, So we're putting in the universe. If there isn't, I also called DIBs. If any of us get into porn, I mean we're that's gonna be the sequel podcast to this one. Robert Evans makes a porno. Um, it is not going

to be popular. Uh. Back to Walter freemanow So, Walter graduated from high school when he was just sixteen years old. Uh. He immediately started attending classes at Yale UM. He was academically excellent, but completely miserable. He was too young an immature to get up to any kind of animal house type bonding shenanigans with his fellow young men, and his utter disdain for women made most kinds of socialization impossible. It turns out it's not great to be in college

at age sixteen. Not not the best time to do that. Uh. He briefly worked for the Yale Daily News. But was let go after he spilled a bunch of alphabetized subscriber cards in front of his editor. He joined the swim team at one point, but refused to practice when anyone was around. He want people to see him with his shirt off. Um, so he's You get a feel for the kind of young man Walter Freeman was not a comfortable one. Um now, and in fairness, knowing about his dad,

how could he possibly have been right? His initial degree program was engineering, but this track was disrupted at the end of his junior year when he ate a bad batch of raw clams and caught typhoid fever. He spent months laid up with this, in an assortment of other ailments that took up the entirety of his first semester senior year at Yale. The long months he spent at hospitals and sick beds helped Walter realize that he wanted something different out of life, a career in medicine. M now.

He'd initially not wanted to go down that road, do largely to the fact that his father had told him it was a terrible life. Don't be a fucking doctor. As he whips himself. Uh, this isn't about you. I'm whipping myself because someone else left a muffin out on the counter. This is they're whipping. But I needed to talk to you. Also, he's third generations to his dad.

Probably was forced into it by his dad. Yeah, and so he maybe this was his one thing where he was trying to be like, you don't do what you don't have. You don't have to do this, and it didn't matter. I feel like he's saying, you don't have to do this while everybody looks at him whipping himself

and it's like, you really don't have to do this. So, uh, Walter, seeing his dad was a miserable, fucked up person, Walter instead looked towards his grandfather as a role model and enrolled in summer classes at the University of Chicago to catch up on medical school before or to catch up on like medicine and science related classes before starting medical

school the next year. He excelled in this as well, and attempted to rebuild his health by walking thirty minutes to and from campus every day carrying a heavy box of bones. I don't know where you could just get bones back then. Yeah, he just decided he needed. He wanted to like get healthy, and a way to do it was to carry around a lot of bones. And because he's a person, a rock isn't good enough. Yeah, there were more bones than rocks back then. There were

just people dying left and right. So he stopped H. Holmes's place and picked up what years this that doesn't check out? Actually I think it might check out this late late eighteen nineties. I don't remember exactly when H. Jones was. No, he would have been. He would have been. He was born in nive so, but there would have been there would have been a lot of bones laying around in the early nine hundred bone heavy period. World

War One was on a shiploads of bones. Now. Yeah, so he excelled in his classes, and he was getting better, you know, healthier thanks to his bone box. But in spite of all this, he he got sick again very quickly and was soon bedridden. He later recalled I wrote home saying, I guess God didn't want me to study medicine. In reply, I received a stern admonition not to think that way, much less to mention it. Wait, Robert, he got sick again, Yeah, he kept he was very sick.

He was a sick, sick young man. Oh man, this is You're right. Mother Nature was trying to kill him. God was definitely trying to stop him from being He's a fighter. He's a fighter. He is a persistent son of a bit. He shouldn't have been let it go. He should not have been somebody should have walked in whipping themselves and been like, this is so that you

can let it go, Just go. Yeah, that's I think that we have to land on the conclusion that if only there'd been more whipping in his childhood, he would have turned out better. Can I ask you a foreshadowing question that I don't expect you to answer yet because I don't know that we should even if you can. But much like we all wonder, like what purpose does

mosquitoes provide? Like what uh, what did they give us in the long run or whatever other than just bad stuff, I would love to know by the end of this episode, I already hate him. If at some point you're gonna be like, well, actually, because of the lobotomy, we now have this positive thing in our world, and I'm anxious to see if if that comes about at all. Yes, he was actually this is getting ahead a little bit.

He doesn't want to do that to you. I'm just that's what's already in my had I'm like, yeah, I hope there's some benefit to this fucker. Yeah. The spoiler I will give you is that it turned out he was right for the wrong reasons, or at least he was right, but it led him to do the wrong things. Like the little kid in a Bronx tail. I've not seen you. Oh he covers for he covers for a mob guy. And he asked his dad, Robert de Niro. He goes, I did I did a good thing, right, Dad?

And he goes, yeah, you did. You did a good thing for a bad man, Like it was the right thing, but you did it for the wrong person. Yeah. Well it's a little different than that. We'll get well, we'll get there. So after a second ton selectomy, Freeman's health improved, and soon he was off to medical school. During the first Hand bones in hand. During the First World War, he was drafted into the Army Medical Corps and he

became a sergeant. He continued his education. He was demoted once for threatening his company commander with a shoe, but otherwise had a solid service we're not. We can't skip this with a shoe just a little shoe fight. You've had a couple. I've never had a shoe fight. We we all have the odds shoe fight. I can Tina Turner, that's the most popular shoe fight of all time. Yeah, it was just like an argument and he like picked up his shoe and yelled at somebody and didn't realize

that they were his commanding officer. Um it's less interesting than you'd think. It's funnier when you just summarize it that way. Um. Now. Walter graduated as a doctor in nineteen twenty, the second in his class. By this point, he had become so enamored with medicine that every other aspect of his past had followed by the wayside. Medicine, he wrote, held my interest to the point where I excluded many other things. In fact, I was barely aware of my family. Do not recall what they were doing

or where they were during this period. So Walter has fallen fully into medicine. And speaking of falling fully into something, Daniel van Kirk, it's time for us and our audience to fall fully into the products and services that support this program. Let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. Let's let's whip ourselves in front of the audience to convince them to buy these these products that support the show. Imagine me wailing on myself with a cat of nine tales.

It makes me sad. But you, I didn't come to school, and so now you have to hurt yourself. And yeah, now I have to hurt myself products. We're back. So when we left off, Walter Freeman had fallen in love with medicine and had forgotten what his family was even doing. He was so enthralled with his new career, and in his father's case, what he was doing was dying of liver cancer. Now, yeah, yeah, yeah, Walter could not really

have cared less about this. The only thing he did to help his father during this period, because he was living at home still, it was periodically shave him with a straight razor. He refused to soften his dad's stubble in warm water before shaving him because quote, the task was distasteful, and I finished it as quickly as possible.

I'm sure my mother would have been more gentle, but she considered shaving a man's job, and I was the only one at home, so like, I'm gonna I'll shave you, dad, but I'm not gonna like make it pleasant for you, because I want to get done with this ship quick. Great great kid. Now, although his dad was kind of sucked him up, so fair, I guess you have to whip me. I can't do it myself. I can't get shaved without a whipping. As a medical intern, Walter was

somewhat uneven. He excelled in neurology, but proved less apt at handling what he called scut work, like transporting urine samples for analysis. Sometimes he would pour samples down the drain just to be rid of them. He was fascinated by neurosurgery, but too bored of the details of it to actually learn to perform surgery. He was fascinated by illness, but almost bored by the actual human beings he had to treat. He was, in short, a very strange dude,

as this passage from the lobotomist makes clear. Soon another patient commanded Freeman's curiosity. A young man who arrived at the hospital with his penis and dire shape and flamed and dark. The organ was encircled by a ring that the patient's girlfriend had thrust over it but was unable to remove Freeman. Yet, we're talking like nineteen twenties cock rings. I think we're talking a normal ring that she put on his cock and it became a problem when he

got hard. No. Yeah, that's why you use the like the bendy rubber ones, not like a normal metal ring. That's one of our sponsors today. Yes, Josiah and Sons old fashioned Amish cock rings, the only cock rings that are made entirely out of wood. If you want the most pain a cock ring can put you in, you want a Josiah and Son's cock ring that was too perfect. Now in Redwood, So a guy walks in and says, hey,

I gotta, I gotta. And you know that that conversation was awkward because much like you just talked about, no one was using good like healthy like jargon for each other to talk about themselves. Or they don't think anyone uses the word penis in that entire conversation. He's like, I've gone problematic in my nethers. Ye. So uh. Freeman ended the patient's agony by filing through the ring and twisting it free with forceps. The boy asked for the ring, but I told him it was a specimen and that

I would have to keep it. Freeman wrote, I had the ring, repad and the Freeman Man crest and de graved on it for years. Afterward, Freeman wore the specimen on a goat shade. If we were in an episode of Mine Hunters, this is what we would call a trophy. Yeah, that's fucked up. What a conversation starter, though. I like that you don that crest aftermarket because this used to be this used to be a broken ring. How so well, a gentleman came in had it in his nethers. I

took it off and now I probably present it wo man. Wow, yeah, real quick, think about this. There's a chance, unless he was buried with it, that ring is out there somewhere. God, I hope. So if you have Walter Freeman's cockering necklace, I would pay good money to have it. I don't know what I would do with it. We'll find a use for it. If you could start collecting things from your episodes and you'd be like the Collector and Guardians

of the Galaxy in the Marvel universe. But you're like, oh, that's actually from the episode where we talk about, because that ring is gotta be I bet somebody doesn't even know what they have. Or if I get a TV show that would be that would be the premises me hunting down artifacts of terrible people will start with like an original copy of one of Hitler's favorite, uh fantasy novels.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, Saddam Hussein's typewriter, you know, all the all the all the great, all the hits, Ron Hubbard's I don't know, uh boat yeah, or like that first episode I did where we talked about the Nazis in Hollywood, like even an old like Lemley's like movie cars o hell yeah yeah, yeah, the city of Pittsburgh. Man, there's a lot of things to collect. Okay, sorry I have derailed this, but that that I mean, how could

I not? We just went filing tale. Yeah. So. Walter spent a year in Europe, doing medical residences in France and performing medical testing on animals. The highlight of his trip was watching the autopsy of an elephant. He was fascinated by the four hour task of opening the creature's skull to remove its brain. Walter's first thought was that a jackhammer would have been the ideal tool. To remove it.

But this thought, pro says, spawned a lifelong fascination in finding unique ways to break into skulls and access brains. He is into that do what you love, the money will follow. His first major job came courtesy of his grandfather, Keene, who used his connections to get his grandson a gig as the senior medical officer in charge of St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, d C. This was a psychiatric hospital, and working there gave Walter a direct look into the

horrific ways nineteen twenties America treated the mentally unwell. St. Elizabeth was essentially a giant box filled warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc, but filled with sick people instead of antiquities. There were very few real treatments for psychiatric disorders, so patients were just locked in there together until they either died or lied well enough to claim that they had had a spontaneous remission. That

was that was healthcare back then. Oh yeah, your head sick, huh, Well, we're gonna put you in a miserable box until you decide you're healthy. Yeah yeah. Walter or Freeman found this new charge horrifying. He was sickened by the forty inmates of his asylum, and he wrote the slouching figures, the vacant stare or averted eyes, the shabby clothing and footwear, the general and tidiness all aroused rejection rather than sympathy

or interest. So he's horrified and not sympathetic with these people. Yeah, it doesn't feel bad for him at all. Yeah, yeah, they're they're just he's just disgusted by them. Now, since the inmates of this asylum were too pitiful to deserve Walter's sympathy, he instead focused on learning about the brain of the psychotic, as he called it, which is again was like the general it's a specific term now, it was just the general term for anyone that was like

not fitting into society back you couldn't conform. Yeah, Walter's goal was less to alleviate discomfort and more to help these people return to life as productive members of capitalist society. Quote. I looked around me at the hundreds of patients and thought, what a waste of manpower and woman power. So again, not particularly sympathetic to their suffering. He is very gender inclusive. Yeah. Yeah. Towards this end, he experimented with differing oxygen levels and

their impacts on the brain of manic people. He also pioneered a new easier method of collecting spinal taps from the lobotomist. Instead of recruiting help to secure patients in a deep bend while sitting then inserting the needle of a collection syringe between the vertebra, Freeman employed what he was fond of calling the jiffy spinal tap. Without assistance

from other staff members. Freeman directed patients to sit backward on a chair and deeply bend their neck over the chair back, carefully navigating the opening at the base of this goal. He then pushed a needle into a reservoir of spinal fluid located just inside but perilously close to the base of the brain. Even a slight error in the insertion of the needle could permanently injure the patient.

So Walt, he's just showing off, and this this risk was worth because it allowed him to work alone without close collaboration with colleagues. Um now a mature adult, Walter was still very much a loner, and he preferred his own professional company to acting as part of a team, even when that went meant a greater risk to the aation. Walter opened a private practice while working at St. Elizabeth's to further his research, and also took a job as

a professor of neurology at George Washington University. By the early nineteen thirties, he had a well earned reputation as a psychiatric pioneer. Now, Walter was largely responsible for the introduction of several exciting new treatments, insulin shock therapy, which plunged patients into insulin shock to try and correct schizophrenic symptoms. He also experimented with metrosol shock therapy and electro convulsive therapy.

The essential goal of all these treatments was the same to slap sick people out of their issues by horribly traumatizing their system. So he's that kind of doctor. He's like, Ah, these people have a problem. We just need to funk them up enough that they they get their ship together. The only time I know of something like this working is in heat stroke, because you instantly need to be put into an ice tub right away, Like we need

to shock you out of the thing you're in. But the idea that we could take anything psychologically and essentially smack you out of it through one form of mild torture or another is insane. Who did this ever work enough that somebody was like, I think this is the way to do it, you know. Um, So what There's a couple of things going on here. One of them is that electro convulsive therapy is still at a very small scale used today. There are certain people with certain

fairly rare problems that it can help. So I'm sure there were some people who had very severe psychiatric distress who were helped by the electro convulsive therapy a tiny fraction of the total, and I'm sure there was a larger number who were while they had issues, were also able to realize like, oh my god, they're gonna keep torturing me if I don't pretend to be better, And so they would just like, okay, i'll be better. I won't. I won't kind of I won't let you know I'm suffering.

Isn't that kind of like the mouse in the maze? Oh I just got to stop this and so that that doesn't happen to me anymore. Yeah, but you're learning through like not you're learning or just like have love and dog type ship of like this just happens to you every time. So you just learned to like stop being loud, but nothing's changed. Yeah, that's a kind of I think what goes on with a lot of these people.

It's a mix of the tiny amount who like legitimately do benefit from it because electric convulsive therapy can be helpful and a larger number who were like, oh, this is awful, I'll just stop complaining. Yes, I don't want to go through this anymore. Um now. It was nineteen thirty five when Walter Freeman first ran into the treatment that would come to define his practice and the great

bulk of his adult life. That year, he attended a presentation in London by a researcher who had experimented with damaging the frontal lobes of chimpanzees just to see what happened. The results were more or less what you'd expect. These brain damage chimps became quiet, listless, inactive. Freeman and a Portuguese neurologists us money is, we're both fascinated by this. Mona is right away headed back home to Portugal to

experiment with severing the frontal lobes of human beings. The thinking was that if this procedure could calm chimpanzees down, it might have the same effect on people suffering from a mental illness that led to radical swings in personality and mood, stuff like a bipolar disorders exactly, seizure disorders and stuff, a whole bunch of different things, because again, a lot of stuff that we now recognize our separate

things were all lumped together back in that day. Um So if you were like a schizophrenic, or if you had a seizure disorder, or if you were bipolar, they might just say, lump all those people together is the same thing. You know. They weren't great at this yet. Uh. In nineteen thirty six, Antonio Monez had perfected his treatment, the leucotomy, which involved drilling two small holes in the side of the head in order to sever connective tissue

that attached the frontal lobe to the rest of the brain. Now, at the time, there were two main theories of psychiatric illness. The first, which was pushed by guys like Freud, was that psychiatric ailments were all basically the result of buried memories, misplaced desires, past traumas, things that you could sit down and work out with a psychotherapist over a small mountain

of cocaine and uncomfortable couch. The other theory was that these illnesses were caused by emotional signals from the brain

that were so strong they simply overwhelmed a person. Now, obviously neither theory is entirely right um, but the theory that guys like Freeman would adopt, which was that you know these it was a bunch of signals from the brain, was closer to right than Freud's theory because it explains stuff like you know, um uh, seizure disorders or like schizophrenia and stuff which are not You can't talk therapy someone with schizophrenia out of having issues like it's a

problem with like signals their brain is sending and they need some sorts of medication. I think sometimes surgery helps. But like so, Freeman is on the right track. What he and other scientists who like adopt this school of thought are realizing is that you can't talk your way through all of your mental problems, which is correct. There are mental problems that have to be dealt with on like more of a chemical physical level. So that's what I say when I say he was he was right

about sort of what the issues were. Um but then we get into what he decided the treatment should be, which was not correct. But he was on the right track when he like figured out like what was going on with people where he was closer to write than a lot of mainstream doctors. So Maniza's leucotomy seemed to provide relief to a number of patients. And I should note that there are variants of this procedure we used today.

Patients suffering from some types of seizure disorders sometimes have parts of the brain disconnected from one another to stop or reduce the frequency of said seizures. We still do use brain surgery. That's kind of an evolution of the leucotomy to treat people today, and it can be very helpful to again a very small number of people who suffer with these disorders. Um. So Moniz was experimenting with real medicine and he was very responsible with the implications

of his treatment. When he received the Nobel Prize for it in nineteen forty nine, he insisted the leucotomy was only to be used as a treatment of last resort when absolutely nothing else could provide a patient with relief. So Monez not gonna say is a bad guy. He's one of the early experimenters with what would come to

be known as a lobotomy. But he's he's doing it because number one, he recognizes it does help in some cases, and he's he's very clear about like, we only do this if there's no other chance of them living a normal life, or if we want to funk with a chimpanzee. That was the other guy. Oh that's right, sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Moniz just watched that and was like, oh, ship,

this might best. Yeah. Now. Walter Freeman paid attention to the work of Antonio Moniz, but he was not convinced that the leucotomy ought to be a last resort for suffering people. As the manager of an asylum, he was deeply frustrated by how much time and manpower it took to subdue patients dealing with psychotic episodes, schizophrenic breaks, manic faces, etcetera. The idea that all this could be calmed by the just chopping up their brains was deeply appealing to him.

So start, yeah, yeah, that'll that'll make it. Wait my job. So I'm sick of what if I just break them? Line them up? So Freeman developed a modification of moniz is pers Sieger and renamed it a lobotomy in much the same way as Oreos modified the hydrox cookie, and like Oreos, Freeman's procedure was destined to capture the vast majority of the market share for such a product. Like Oreos, you gotta get to that middle good stuff and get that out. You got you gotta get that out now.

I'm gonna quote now from Jack L. High, who wrote The Lobotomist and also wrote this piece for The Washington Post. To him, the intoxicating thing about psycho surgery mon iss coin term for psychiatric surgery, was its potential to sever the links between the over excited emotions of an unhealthy thalamus and the behavioral functions of the prefrontal lobes of the brain. If it worked, the destruction of these nerve

fibers would prevent the thalamus from poisoning patients. Thinking he absorbed the details of Moniss work, and with neurosurgeon Watts became figuring out how to adapt the Portuguese physicians techniques. Freeman and Watts used brains from the hospital Morgue to practice the coring of sections of the prefrontal lobes with a lukatom, which is the device they'd used for that. But the summer of nineteen thirty six, they were ready for a live patient, a Miss Hammett from Topeka, Kansas. Now.

Ms Hammett was sixty three years old. She suffered from depression. She had frequent hysterical fits and difficulties sleeping. Freeman talked with her and concluded that a lobotomy was the only way for her to avoid spending the rest of her life in a mental hospital. Much of the impetus behind this seems to have been her husband, who was tired of dealing with a wife who needed help herself rather

than just preparing meals for him and staying quiet. Freeman and his new partner Watts, schedule Miss Hammett for an appointment on September nineteen thirty six. Now, the first lobotomy did not start off well. Miss Hammett tried to back out when she learned the procedure would require her to shave her head. Many of her mental health issues focused around an obsession with her thinning hair, so this was obviously a matter of grave concern for her. WHOA, yeah,

we're doing the one thing she's already upset about. Oh yeah, yeah. So Freeman and Watts assured her they would only have to shave off a few small sections of her scalp. This was a lie, obviously. Once they forcibly anesthetized her, they shaved her bald. Freeman recorded that her last words before going underwear, Who is that man? What does he want here? What is he going to do to me? Tell him to go away? Oh? I don't want to see him. Yeah, Well that's how crazy people talk. So

still I don't think that. Oh yeah, that's him. Yeah, I think she's very reasonable. That's my point. Once, once you've been like labeled, we're going to do this to you, no matter what you say, They're like, well you would talk like that, You're a crazy You need her a

looney loony. With Freeman watching, Wat's drilled six holes a top miss Hammett's skull and inserted a luca toom, a device that essentially hold the brain into each hole, both doctors worked together on leisuroning the brain, with Watts the actual surgeon, managing the whole affair, and as odd as it sounds, the lobotomy seems to have helped Miss Hammett, At least she and her husband both reported that it helped. Freeman wrote in his autobiography, she survived five years, according

to Mr Hammett, the happiest years of her life. As she expressed it, she could go to the theater and really enjoy the play without thinking of what her back hair looked like or whether her shoes pinched. And it is entirely possible that this is an accurate representation of how Miss Hammett felt. Many of Dr Freeman's lobotomy patients experienced relief from some of their symptoms. That said, even the positive experiences with lobotomies are clouded by deeply disturbing

questions of consent and structures of oppression. They're saying speaking of sorry, sorry, I just really they're saying it actually worked. Yeah, she she experienced relief that was not wildly uncommon with

his patients. Yeah, but if she's worried about her shoes and stuff, it's kind of sounds to me like, and I know we're near a professional and so please take this with the grain ofshal anyone who hears my voice that maybe she suffers some some sort of like O. C. D she was like worried about and so the lobotomy just made her not really care about anything. So they're like, oh, things are better. Well, yep, no, you just don't care about anything. That's not I guess, I guess you're not

doing the thing you did. But I don't know if that falls into category better. But but for them at the time, they were saying that for them at the time, this woman was complaining. Now the woman's not complaining. We fixed her. It's a different Yeah, we're going to get into that a little bit more and how problematic all this was. But again, it's important you know that at the time this looked to again the men who were the only ones whose opinions mattered in this situation, as

if they were making people like Mrs Hammett better. Um, now you know what will make you better, Daniel van Kirk. The products and services that advertise on this show. Nice. Yeah, can we go to them? Can I learn about him? We can? Here's uh capitalism lobotomy. We're back now. Uh, As I said before we rolled out the positive experiences with lobotomies that you read about when you kind of

read about these early operations. Um, we're all clouded by very disturbing questions of consent and also structures of oppression that existed back then and still exist today. During my research, I came across a story Corps interview with one of Walter Freeman's patients, Patricia Mowen and her husband Patricia with Her husband's name is Glynn. By the way, Patricia was lobotomized in nineteen sixty two, and I'm going to read the transcript of this husband and wife talking about her procedure.

And again, this is considered to be like one of the stories of like a success. But I'll read this to you and you tell me if you think there's something fucked up going on here, but I will. Glenn Mowen, my name is Glynn Owen. I am seventy nine years old. I signed the release for Pat's lobotomy. Patricia Mowen, we have not talked about it since I had the lobotomy. I don't think ever. My husband is not a great communicator, Glenn. I don't talk to her any more than I have

to Patricia. Glenn, be nice. Both laugh. We've been married about thirteen years and it just started. I cried all the time. I was just mentally no good, Glenn. One night I came home and she said, well, I've done it now. She'd taken a whole bottle of some kind of pills. Patricia. That's when the doctor decided it was time. Glenn. He told me this was the last resort. I didn't know what else to do, Patricia. Dr Freeman said, you can come out of this vegetable, or you can come

out dead. And I guess I was miserable enough that I didn't care. Glenn. I was kind of worried because of the operation of severing a nerve in the brain. It sounded kind of wild to me, Patricia. He was afraid he was going to lose his cook, Glenn, and I don't like to cook. Patricia. I remember nothing after I saw Dr Freeman. I don't remember going to the hospital, or having it done, or how long I was there.

That's all gone, Glenn. We were coming back from San Jose after the operation, and pat informed me that she couldn't wait to get home because she wanted to file for divorce. Patricia. I don't remember that at all. I don't think I said it, Glenn. I think I just went on driving and ignored the situation. Began to wonder myself, how much good did this operation accomplish? Really, I can see no changes in most areas, except she is much

easier to get along with Patricia. You didn't see any change in the way I kept the house or the way I Glenn. No, Patricia, I was more a free person after I had it, just not so concerned about things. I just went home and started living, I guess is the best way I can say it. I was able to get back to taking care of things and cooking and shopping in that kind of thing. Glenn delighted it. The way it's turned out, it's been a good life. WHOA, yeah,

that's there's a lot going on there. My favorite I hope on Glenn's tombstone, who we know is definitely dead by now. It says I ignored it and kept driving. I ignored it and kept driving. That's probably how he lived a lot of his life with her, until he had to deal with her ass because she wouldn't do the things she was supposed to and kept complaining about wanting more pills. She wasn't happy cooking and shopping. So we drilled a hole in the brain and then it

was fine. You know what, I'm also going to claim ignorance here, my friend, I was under the assumption before we started this that if you got a lobotomy, you were just a shell of a person, that you were a vegetable or you died. Like, uh, that happened a lot. But but some people just kind of went into like in a I don't know if you forks the right word, but a like just a las a fair feeling towards life after a lobotom Like they still were very cognitive,

they just didn't really have any argument nerves left. Yeah, that's its separating the frontal lobe in the way that they did kind of separates you from your concerns. In some ways, it stopped people from feeling or thinking as much. Very agreeable. Yeah, that was kind of the best case scenario with some of these people. Um, but some they did they detached too much or go too deep, and that's when you get catatonic. Yeah, we'll get into that. I mean, it's it wasn't an exact science, and they

won't be always good at it. That just blew me away to hear that exchange, because I've been sitting here the whole time thinking. Every lobotomy ends with just a feeling of like, no, no, you're gone. A lot of these people went on to live productive lives. A lot of them were rendered catatonic. It kind of depended on how the operation when, like the thing is, brains are weird. I've known people who have been shot through the head

with rifles, um, and we're fine. Definitely not getting a rifle in the studio then yeah, well, I mean they would up fine, we could just It's just it's kind of a crapshoot with brains. It's it's wild the amount of things that they can go through, uh and suffer no noticeable effects. And it's wild the number of things that can happen to them that seem minor and just change the person forever. Like it's a fucking crap shoot

at the look at the NFL exactly now. Mrs Hammett's lobotomy in nineteen thirty six proved to be the beginning of a decade's long career carving into the brains of human beings. He and Watts were one of medicine's most dynamic duos. Following that operation, they established an office at a home in Washington, d C and gradually refined their technique, replacing Moniz's luca toom with an object Jack l Hi

describes as resembling a butter knife. They also switched around the positioning of the holes from which they cut into the brain. When patient symptoms persisted, Watson Freeman would perform multiple lobotomies and make deeper cuts into the brain. One patient, a lawyer suffering from alcoholism, escaped the hospital after his

operation and was found drunk in a downtown bar. One patient showed up after his surgery and threatened to murder the doctors two poled guns when Freeman recommended they undergo lobotomies, so it was not always a smooth process. From early on, Freeman viewed proper pr as critical to gaining widespread adoption for his new technique. He and Watts started setting up a lobotomy booth at the annual A m A Convention in nineteen thirty nine, crafting displays designed to draw the

attention of journalists rather than impressing other doctors. He later wrote, I found the technique of getting noticed in the papers. It was to arrive a day or two ahead of the opening of the convention and installed the exhibit in the most graphic manner, and then be alert for prowling newsmen. Now jackal High notes that Freeman used handheld clackers to get the attention of reporters with loud noises. He and Watts even lobotomized a monkey in nineteen thirty nine. This

spectacular event dominated coverage of the convention. Freeman wrote that night our monkey died, but Watson I made the headlines even though we did not get an award, and so so begins as press. I mean, that's what he's going for here, that's what he's going for. Well, the monkey died, but people seem to be interested. Now. Of the first six twenty three surgeries Watson Freeman carried out had what they described as good results, were fair, and were poor.

Three percent died during or immediately after the surgery, and if you take Freeman's word for it, those are good results. More than half of people had like a good result of the operation, particularly considering these tended to be patients who had exhausted conventional treatment options. However, Freeman never went into detail about what he considered to be a good result, nor did he update his results when patients relapsed which was extremely common, with the result of that monkey died,

so he was he was because yeah yeah now. Nurses reported that patients of the duo often needed to relearn how to eat and handle other basic tasks. They soiled themselves, flirted bizarrely with orderlies, and would sit staring off into the distance for hours on end. Walter Freeman considered these positive changes. The fact that lobotomy patients were dull, quiet, uncoordinated, and lazy was he felt an improvement over manic episodes

and excessive activity. Many officials at mental hospitals felt the same way. Freeman. Watt's patients were much easier to deal with on a long term basis, since many of them just sat around quietly. By Walter had started to experiment with new methods of lobotomy. He was frustrated by the fact that the procedure required a skilled neurosurgeon. That meant he could only perform the operation when Watts was around, which dramatically limited the number of people he could properly lobotomize.

This was a problem because he'd come to believe that lobotomies worked best for patients in the early stages of their illness. If people waited too long. He feared the lobotomy might not really help. So he's like, we got to get into this ship faster. This needs to be like the first thing we're doing first. You're feeling down today, sitting this chair and shave your head. I'll be right

there now. Walter started looking into the research of other doctors, and he found in a town in surgeon named Tomorrow, Fiamberti Armano had developed a new procedure for reaching the brain without drilling careful holes in the skull. Instead, Armano broke into the skull through a soft bone at the rear of the ice socket. Working on corpses, Freeman developed a method of accessing the frontal lobe of the brain through the ice socket using an ice pick from his kitchen.

Working in secret so Watts wouldn't find out, Freeman started performing solo lobotomies in January of ninety six. He operated out of the office he and Watch shared, but during hours when he knew his partner would not be in the building, Freeman ice picked nine human brains in short order, sending his patients home in a taxi cab. Next. According to The Washington Post, Freeman later wrote that during his tenth transorbital surgery, he called Watts to his office to

assess the operation. Wats later claimed, however, that he entered Freeman's office unsummoned and found Freeman pushing an ice pick in the ice socket of an unconscious man. Freeman audaciously asked Wats hold the ice picks so Freeman could take a photograph. Whichever account is true, no one disputes the

result of this encounter. Whatt's threatened to break off their partnership if Freeman persisted in performing lobotomies himself and treating them as office procedures done without surgical gloves or sterile draping. For the remainder of his association with Watts, Freeman did these operations outside the office, So that's cool now, Watson. Freeman would later fall out professionally over the issue of

transorbital lobotomies. Although Watts retained a deep respect for his partner, he couldn't get over his belief that brain surgery ought to only be carried out by a competent brain surgeon, not random guys with an ice pick. Controversial what a crazy stance, and Freedman was like, you are far out there. No, have you seen this ice pick? Children should be able to fix cars, and non brain surgeons should be able to put ice picks through people's eyes. I believe that now.

A book the two men authored on the subject of lobotomies includes this paragraph. The authors regret to announce that they have been unable to reach an agreement on the subject of transorbital lobotomy. Freeman believes that he has proved the method to be simple, quick, effective, and safe to entrust to the psychiatrist. Watts believes that any procedure involving cutting off the brain tissue is a major operation and

should remain in the hands of a neurological surgeon. This is when you're in a relationship with somebody and you're like, I don't even know why we're fighting about this. Yeah, why we've been fighting about this? I've just I've just ice pick, and some motherfucker's like, why are you angry? Right,

we shouldn't be having this fight. Yeah. This book, psycho Surgery and the Treatment of Mental Disorders and Intractable Pain, made an enormous splash in the world of medicine when it was first published in nineteen fifty the Tomb featured language not often used in works of medicine, like the term scrawny frayed cats used to refer to a group

of patients. This lurd pros, along with the gaush marketing technique used by Freeman, who attract the press, alienated many mainstream medical professionals, but the book was popular and cemented Freeman's status is a radical physician working on the cutting, perhaps poking edge of medical science. On the eve of his fifty second birthday, he wrote, I have a feeling of competence and assurance that is almost grandiose. Maybe it comes from superb health, and maybe from the fruition of

dreams that have proved within my grasp. But anyhow, I'm sitting on top of the world. So that's good. He's happy. What do you want? In our next episode, We're going to talk about the second phase of Walter Freeman's career. We're also going to discuss the most famous patient he and Watts ever operated on, the poster victim of lobotomy and sister to President John F. Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy. But right now, Daniel van Kirk, it's time for you to

plug some plug doubles. I want to let everybody know I have my first comedy album coming out. It's on It's on Blonde Medicine. That's the label, and it will drop on November fift Friday, November. It's called Thanks Diane. I recorded it in Los Angeles at the UCB Theater and uh, if this is before when you're hearing this, you can go to Daniel van Kirk dot com and pre order, or us go to the iTunes Store app on your phone, specifically the iTunes Store app, and you'll

be able to pre order there. But on eleven fifteen or any time there after, you can get it anywhere that you get your music or listen to such things. I should say music, but it feels like it's also for comedy, but it's called Thanks Diane. And go to Daniel van Kirk for all my tour dates as well as my own podcast, pen Pals or Dumb People Tone and I'm Robert Evans uh and you can find me here on the podcast you're currently listening to, so please

keep listening to this podcast. You can find our sources on behind the Bastards dot com. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram and at bastards pod. You can find me on Twitter at I right. Okay, Uh, you can also find a lobotomy if you show up at my door and pay me forty five dollars. I have an ice pick, so you cannot be doing these. Brain surgeons need to do these. I feel like anyone can

do these if they have an ice pick. Having this argument, I I feel like Daniel, Daniel, I respect your opinion on this, but I disagree with it well, and I respect your expertise, but I think you need to wear gloves. Oh gloves you mean cowards hands. All right, that's the fucking episode. Buy a T shirt on t public and go off into the world and perform unlicensed lobotomies or not. Nope, Sophie, we're pro lobotomy now or not.