Morbid - Episode 487: Walter Freeman

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

When Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz developed the lobotomy in 1935, it was little more than a crude surgery developed as a blanket treatment for mental illness that involved drilling into the skull and scrambling the neural connections in the frontal lobe. Less than a decade later, however, American neurologist Walter Jackson Freeman had refined Moniz’s procedure and developed a non-surgical procedure that could be performed in a doctor’s office, which he called a transorbital lobotomy. What he touted as successes, quickly turned into a series of life altering failures...but he kept going.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. Hey, Weirdo's I'm Ash and I'm so excited. And I apologize, I'm sick, so you bitch. I might sneeze all over you or cough all over you. That's nasty. But yeah, I can be taken out in the post editing process. It can. Just know that I sneezed and coughed all over you.

We took it out. We took it out. But yeah, so I'm trying to I'm trying to muster up my strength, my strength and energy right now, because this is a pretty wild case that we're going to be talking about. It's not like, it's not one case. It's a man's career is what I should say.

Okay. We're gonna be covering Walter Jackson Freeman. Oh, shit. The father of the transorbital lobotomy. That little thing, that guy, that little lobot about, yeah. He's a, he's something, a monster. He is something. We're gonna do this in two parts

because I do wanna talk about the rosemary Kennedy lobotomy. That is so tragic. That is a, I mean, reading about that. That is a tragic rocked my world. I remember, I actually didn't know about that until maybe I would say like five or six years ago when there was like some Kennedy special on the history channel. I never knew that and when they started going into it I was like, oh my god. Oh, it's horrific because they did to that woman.

It's her exact, exactly. And then to think that that really wasn't that long ago. No, it really wasn't. In the grand scheme of things. No. No. And that her own, it was her own father who really, really fucked her over there. Mm-hmm.

But I mean, it was both her parents, but we'll get into that in part two. I want to start part two with that and like give it, it's due. Yeah, because it's a quite a story. And it's time. It's the story and it needs its own kind of moment there. Definitely. because it's quite a story and it's time. It's one of those. It needs its own kind of moment there.

Definitely. But we are going to begin by talking about Dr. Freeman himself, and explain where he came from, how he even came into this, like what his intentions at first were. Okay. All that fun stuff. Because it seems like they got lost down the road.

They certainly did. Yeah. I don't know a lot about his origin story. He's so excited to hear. When you hear about him in the beginning, it feels like, and you're just kind of hopeful that it's true that he had these grand and somewhat pure intentions at one point.

I think they were lost in this thing where he believed in a time where they believed like a talk therapy was the only way to get through mental illness. He believed that it was physical, like medical intervention that was the only way to get. Both were wrong and both were right. Yeah. Because both of them were standing, both sides were sitting there standing in the, this is the only way. Right. And it's not. It's a mixture of both. As we know now, we still haven't perfected it.

It's very much a mixture of both, but each of them we're saying, no, no, no, my way is the only way. So his intentions in the beginning were he wanted to cure mental illness. Okay. But my goodness, did he go about it the wrong way? Yeah. And he just kept going, even through his failures, which his failures weren't like failing at, you know,

you know, creating something entertaining or something and just keep working at it until you do it right. You're failing at human beings, like you're ruining human beings lives with your failures. So it's like you can't keep doing this, but he kept doing it at the expense of so many people. That's the thing. He's just like on to the next one. And that's when he goes into evil, villain territory. It's like you start with these intentions, but my goodness, did they get lost along the way? So when Portuguese neurologist, Aegis Monez developed the lobotomy because a lot of

people confused that Dr. Freeman was the one who created the lobotomy. He didn't. Okay. He created the transorbital lobotomy, which is a totally different procedure. Aegis Monez was the one who created the lobotomy. They also called it a leukotomy, but we know it now as alubotomy. It was in 1935, and it was just a super crude surgery that was developed as a blanket treatment for mental illness. It involved drilling into the skull and literally just scrambling the neural connections to the frontal lobe. Yeah. And they just thought, yeah, that'll fix it.

Just egg beat that person's, yeah, that'll fix it. Just, yeah. Just egg beat that person's brain and that'll do. And the thing is, all of these ideas have a basis in reality. And you're like, if you just followed that in a logical and more like normal way, you could have got somewhere, I think. But you followed it down this wild pass of just let's scramble the connections. It's like, you didn't think of anything more refined here.

Because that's the thing when you think about it, you're like, yeah, scrambling the world. Yeah. Like, I don't know about that. I don't think that's gonna do much. So less than a decade later, after Egasmonez created the lobotomy, American neurologist Walter Jackson Freeman, refined question mark, the procedure to develop

a non-surgical procedure, because that was obviously a very surgical procedure. This one could be performed in a doctor's office. That's terrifying. And this is what he called the transorbital lobotomy. And how is that not surgical? Well, Freeman's procedure involved inserting a medical instrument very similar to an ice pick into the patient's orbital socket.

So eyeball sever, like right next to the eyeball, it would go in. Okay. And it would be used to sever the neural connections without requiring surgery, hospital stays, or long recovery times. It was advertised as quick, easy, and a painless solution to everything. Painless? Yeah.

Let me just show this thing to your eye. They were like, oh, don't worry, we'll numb you up. It's fun. What? And if you look at patients, like afterwards, their eyes are all black, obviously. Of course. It's intense.

That's awful. And he said he could cure, it could cure general lethargy, occasional depressions, schizophrenia, violent aggressive behavior, everything on the spectrum. And they basically made the procedure a go-to solution for very complex psychological issues

that have affected countless people for countless centuries. They were like, oh, we figured it out. And unfortunately, while the procedure was slightly effective for a very small number of those who received a lobotomy, it was used indiscriminately, often without consideration for the increasingly disastrous outcomes that were happening. They were just like, oh, this one will be fine. You know what? Forget that one. We're going to move on to the next and this will be better.

Sometimes patients, whereas young as four or five years old, are you kidding? Yes. Oh my God. Whose parents, I'm like, yeah. So the question becomes, was Dr. Freeman an indiscriminate ego maniac, or was he just blinded to what he had really done and was looking to be the person to fix it all? I don't know. I think it's a good mix of both.

I think he is evil villain territory for sure. And I think it began as something different and it turned into something fucking awful. I feel like I mean, that kind of happens with a lot of villains. It's true. It's unforgettable the way he just kept going. That's the problem here. When he realized that this is not working.

Where he just kept going, he kept hiding results, he was just moving forward. Like, it wasn't this awful thing. So let's talk about who Walter Freeman is. Lizzy. Walter Freeman, Walter Jackson Freeman Jr. was born on November 14th, 1895 in Philadelphia. I think that makes him a Scorpio, so. There you go. So he was the first of seven children born to Walter Freeman's senior and Corinne Keane Freeman. Walter's maternal grandfather was William Keane, who was a veteran of the Union Army who served in the American Civil War, and was the country's first brain

surgeon. Oh, shit. So he came from some brain people. Metacopal. Walter's earliest years, he was sick a lot, like practically from the moment he was born. Oh, wow. When the boy was only 14 months old, William Keane, his grandfather, was called on by his parents to quote, X-size, 30 enlarged lymph nodes from one side of the baby's neck.

Yeah. Which this procedure ended up causing permanent paralysis of the trapezius and sternomastoid muscles. Oh. Oh. Yeah. So they just took his lymph nodes out on that side? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, enlarged lymph nodes. Yeah, yeah. Now in the years after that, Walter was dealing with a wide array of common and also uncommon illnesses at the time. He got diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, mumps. He had repeated bouts of tonsillitis, and eventually he did a tonsillectomy.

Geez. So he was sick a lot. It sounds like he had some kind of autoimmune disease. Yeah. It sounded like there was definitely something more wrong. But in the late 19th century, Philadelphia was a hub for progressive ideas in science and medicine, and a lot of influential people in those fields lived there.

So Walter grew up surrounded by doctors and surgeons who encouraged him, like very much encouraged his inquisitive nature, because he immediately was like, he was around it all the time, his grandfather who he really liked was a brain surgeon, so he was like, what's this all about? And he ended up earning the nickname little Walter Y Y. Little Walter Y. That's adorable. Because he was always asking, like, why? Why? Why does this work? Oh, he was the original Y.

Yeah, he really was. He was the one who started it. But I mean, it was all basically just ensuring that he was going to go right into medicine, like his father and his grandfather. just ensuring that he was going to go right into medicine, like his father and his grandfather. Now as a student, Walter was stellar. He was super into academics, he was great at it, but he was less interested in,

and less in tune with, was things that little boys his age were, quote unquote, supposed to be interested in. Okay. Like sports and girls and a blast. Which I find like, find just I'm like that. They it's always presented as like, oh, to that's his weirdness.

And it's like the supposed to be interested in part. It should be really a real size tier because it's like, a kid doesn't need to be in sports and girls to be a normal kid. No, it's not like let's not do that. But of course, this made him a little bit of an outsider at school, especially where the time period was. The time period for sure. And at home, it was kind of a mixed platter for him because according to writer Jack L. High,

Walter contentedly assumed the Victorian role of the distant but dominant oldest brother. So he was distant with the siblings, he acted like the boss, and he was also pretty distant with his own father. His father was not like a lovely, Debbie type. Okay. Walter remembered him as, quote, shy, socially awkward, and a humorless father, who's an example taught his son to regard emotional expression as something strange and frightening. I feel like that was pretty typical of the time, unfortunately.

Um, while Walter's father seemed very uncomfortable in his role as like caregiver, like he just didn't seem to be able to function in that. Not a warm fuzzy. Corinne Keane Freeman, the mom, took the complete opposite approach and made a very consistent effort to involve herself and her children's lives, be there emotionally. She was pretty much shut out of her husband's life because he was working all the time. So she was kind of also on the receiving end of just being neglected. So she knew it felt like.

But she reveled in motherhood, like reveled in it. She went to all her children's events and activities around the city. She was there, she would bring them places. She was always with them. She would arrange little vacations with them. She would bring them to like nearby resorts and places like Jamestown, Gloucester, Cape May,

all kinds of places, just them. She sounds rad. And yeah, and it's like, so unlike their relationship, which was pretty tense and strained with their father, their mother was kind of their like, their refuge. She became their like oasis, where they could talk about their emotions very freely with her. That's good.

She did make them sound strange like she would listen. And as they had that, you know, exactly. But of all her children, Walter was still the hardest to reach according to her. Like he was very a loof distant either with her. Very much took after the father. Okay. And actually Corinne described her, Walter as

the cat that walks by himself. Oh, that's what she, that was one of his nicknames. She was a lot of things. What a sweet way to describe it though. She's like, he's just a little cat. The cat walks by himself. Like his alone time. And if there was any figure that loomed very large

over a young Walter's life, it was his grandfather William Keane, the first brain surgeon. Unlike his father who, again, very much struggled to relate to others, which I'm like, I think he probably had some stuff going on of himself by the sounds of it. Yeah.

Because it sounds like he has some issues socially and also just emotionally. Mm-hmm. Like, I don't even, because I don't find, I didn't find anything about him being like aggressive and violent or anything like that. He was just like awkward and distressed out to deal with that. Okay. So I'm like, I think you needed a little bit of, you know, help dealing with that as well.

Right. But yeah, he did not, and also his father didn't like attention. So he did his work. He was also a doctor. But he did not like attention from the public. I didn't want to just do his work. And he wanted to get through it.

And he was very uncomfortable with being showered with any kind of attention. And that's funny funny because it seems like his son didn't end up the same way. Well, because Walter's grandfather, William Keane, reveled in accolades and attention. Because he had a pristine, very stellar reputation in science, and he said the first phrase surgeon.

And he was great. So it's like, he loved it. So it was totally opposite. And Walter definitely was drawn more to that side. And by the time Walter was like an early early in his teens, Keen's work in neurology had actually earned him a level of fame that many scientists never see. He was a role model to Walter, like his intellectual prowess, or his social, like his ability to be like socially aware and socially comfortable, because Walter was still very socially awkward at this point. He was taking after his father. Yeah. But he was looking up to his grandfather. And in time, Walter became his grandfather's favorite grandchild,

really, because I think he saw that he was going to follow after him, but he also saw him as somebody as like, I need to kind of show him the ropes kind of thing. And they spent a lot of time together during Walter's formative years as an adolescent. With Hello Fresh, you got farm fresh, pre-portioned ingredients, and seasonal recipes delivered, you know where, right dear, do a step. Skip those trips to the grocery store, and count on Hello Fresh. Woo!

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[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Now in 1912, Walter enrolled in his freshman year at Yale University. Oh, shit. Yeah. Worry Gilmore. There you go. And unfortunately, he found that he was like a little ill-prepared,

really amount of work in the rigor that was expected of students. Rory felt the same. Exactly. He was Rory Gilmore, exactly. And he actually recalled later, in prep school, a daily stint of 30 lines of Greek translation was standard. In college, it was 30 pages. I can't even imagine male sentence. I'm real ill-prepared for the prep school part of that. For real. I'm ill-prepared for the prep school. Yeah.

Now he said the jump from geometry and algebra to calculus was equally baffling. And I also agree with that. Fuck calculus. Yeah. I never had to do calculus, but my friend's dead, and I was like, yeah, no, that's not for me. It's pretty, it's a lot. But Walter struggled considerably during his first year and he barely passed his classes, but he also was matriculating at 16 years old, which was an achievement in and of itself.

So, yeah. So we have to give him that. But at 16, the rigor was a little too hard. It's like, yeah, we can understand that. That checks. Yeah. And, you know, it also, he's immature at this point. Yeah. 16-year-old boy is not ready for college. But Walter's immaturity and social awkwardness ultimately led to a college experience that he later described as very lonely, intimidating, and not a good time at all.

That's pretty miserable. During his sophomore and junior years at Yale, Walter continued to struggle in all aspects, socially, academically. He tried and repeatedly failed to settle on a major that he could at least enjoy doing. Like, he just wasn't finding his place. Because again, he's 16.

The two years. That's hard. And it was right at the beginning of his senior year that Walter actually contracted typhoid and was hospitalized for a long period. And that's when he began to talk about going into the medical field. Despite his father's insistence that he avoid medicine, really, because his father was like,

it is a very demanding intense career. Right. Walter kept coming back to the idea of being a doctor. And he saw it as he was like, I think this is a good career. You get a good life out of it. Definitely. It sets you up if you're good at it.

And he did have a big interest in poetry as well, but he was looking at it as this is much more of a viable career than poetry. Especially for the time. Yeah, exactly. Now, as Jack L. High notes, Typhoid had stolen half a Freeman senior year, but in return, it had given him an opportunity to ponder his future. Following his graduation from Yale in 1916, he enrolled at the University of Chicago and began to study medicine. So, unlike his time at Yale, during, you know, where he was really struggling to find his

place and his passions. It's almost like when you have to do like your prerequisite. Yeah. It's like that. Yale was his prerequisite. Yeah. Walter acclimated very quickly to medical school. He found that he loved it.

He had a real big aptitude for formulas. He loved laboratory work. He just... He found his place. Now, after two semesters at the University of Chicago, he transferred to the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And many of his fellow students struggled in their first year, but he was like, impressing all his instructors. He was super committed to the hard work. It's in his blood. Yeah, he was very interested in it, very good at it.

They were very impressed by him. And the summer after his first year at the University of Pennsylvania, he returned to Chicago for summer studies, and that's when he started his fascination with the human brain. Particularly, he became very interested in the intersection between medicine and psychiatry. He was very interested in that part. And by his third year in medical school, his studies had come to occupy literally all his time. He was becoming his father.

He was fully committed. And he said, medicine held my interest to the point where I excluded many other things. See later said, that's not healthy. In fact, I was barely aware of my family, do not recall what they were doing or where they were during this period. That's really sad when you break that down. And so he was very engrossed in his studies, but he also just really wanted to start his career. He was like, I loved studying, but I was just ready to take the step out of the nest.

He really didn't like doing internships. Like, he kinda resented it and thought he was above it a little bit. I could see that, especially where his grandfather is who he is, he's like, do you know who I am? Yeah, he's like, I don't need an internship. He referred to it as scut work, and he's the unglamorous day-to-day work

of collecting samples and filling out paperwork was just not something he wanted to do. Well, we all got to start as an paperwork was just not something he wanted to do. Listen, we all got to start as an apprentice. We all do. We all do. Even in a hair salon, you got to do it. There you go.

Now, during this period, Freeman was developing certain characteristic traits that were kind of undesirable, but would end up being pretty relevant or prominent, I should say, during his entire professional life. Yeah, your face told me they weren't going to be great tricks. Yeah. So El-Hi wrote, Freeman eventually realized that as an intern, he was supposed to be a member of a hospital

team, and the role of team player was never one that Freeman filled well. So despite studying under some of the literally most highly regarded surgeons in the field, he's like, I'm better. He would rather work by himself in the lab or just standing at an operating table for hours just focusing on something, which I can't, it's an undesirable trait for sure to not be a team player, but I understand that some people just, it's hard for some people. It just is. I'm not a great team player.

Like I'm just not. And it is an undesirable treat. And one, but it's one that you should work on. Well, that's the thing. Because I was going to say, like, I know that about you, that, like, it's not your favorite thing to do, but when it comes down to it, I've seen you be able to do it. Exactly. And you have to be able to.

Yeah. Because life is a collaborative effort. That's the thing. And a lot of, like, you don't need be able to. Yeah. Because life is a collaborative effort. That's a thing. And a lot of to, like, you don't need to change yourself. No. Like, I never believe in, like, changing those kind of parts about yourself. Like, you don't need to just become a different person. No.

Because, like, I won't. So that's just the way it is. You know, like, if you're not very excited about team-building things, like, that's not going to change. Uh-huh. But, like, you said, you just have to go with it sometimes. And you're gonna see, I think sometimes it helps to see

when something pans out from a team effort. Definitely. And you go, okay, I couldn't have done that by myself. That needed everybody's hands in it. That's the thing, different viewpoints make the world go round, you know? It's like sometimes it is better to do things by yourself. And sometimes people are allowed to do that.

Yeah, of course. Like sometimes you're gonna be like really focused and you'll be able to get the job done. But then other times like you said, someone will see something you maybe didn't see. Exactly. And they can show you that. And especially in the science and medicine. Right.

Multiple points of view and multiple people looking out of thing is what makes you discover things that you never would have. So following his graduation from medical school in 1923, Walter went to Paris and he began postgraduate studies in clinical neurology funded by an American field service scholarship that he had won with the help of his grandfather. One. One quote unquote.

So over a long period of time studying at, I'm going to play this pronunciation because I will butcher it and I don't want to. At la... Salpatrier. Salpatrier, huh? Salpatrier. Yeah, you did it. That place. You done did it. Walter dove much deeper into his studies of psychiatry and neurology.

And he was working with patients that he described as quote, old women worn out in the struggle of life and not ready to take the leap into eternity. Oh, shit. Never felt more seen in my life. Damn, I was going to say, damn. Well, just like, that's true. Or in El France. So Walter's spent months in France, working with patients that struggled to pay for medical treatment,

and he was working as an intern and was also studying the brains of animals and honing his skills in the lab. Okay. His time in Europe was cut short, though, in the late spring of 1924. What did he contract? Well, I know you would think, but no, he received a telegram from his grandfather

letting him know that he'd secured a job for Walter as a senior medical officer in charge of laboratories at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. I feel like Grandpa's pulling a little too many strings. Paul's some strings. Is Walter, Walter's a nepo baby. He's a nepo baby. Wow.

I will say though, it looks like Walter did do the job. Like he put in some work. And he was good at it. Like he was good at his, the studies portion of it. Yeah, it's not like he was like the shitty guy that his grandpa was just like shoving through these. But he was definitely getting escorted through all the doors that were opening for him. The subnafo babies are telling him to.

Exactly. But this was a psychiatric hospital in Washington, DC. Okay. He was going to be a senior medical officer in charge of that laboratory. Got it. So by the time that Walter joined the staff at St. Elizabeth's, Americans were well into a psychiatric crisis that would eventually transform the mental health field and treatment for psychiatric disorders. Between 1903 and 1933, American psychiatric hospitals more than doubled in size.

Some had thousands of patients. Which is far too many. A lot of this was due to the large number of American men returning home from fighting in World War II in a deep psychological trauma. But it also corresponded with a pretty significant rise in the number of physical and psychological diseases like syphilis, alcoholism. These were becoming more and more prevalent. The problem was though that diagnosing an illness and housing a patient were not the same as treating the illness.

Right. You know, just diagnosing it and sticking them in a room is not treating illness. That's fixing anything. So a lot of patients received inpatient treatment that would be very barbaric by today's standards. Truly, it should be by any standards, but it wasn't. And these patients were what inspired Walter to have a feeling he described as quote, a weird mixture of fear, disgust, and shame.

Yeah. So this is why I say, like, I think he looked at it and said this is gross. And we need to do something about it. But then he was gross with what he did about it. So it's like, you know, it just didn't go. You watch it and you're like, that could have been a good story.

Yeah, but it's not. It's like you just went the wrong, you took the wrong path, my friend. Oh, and it sounds like he was just like overconfident in certain abilities. Yeah, he really thought he had it. He really did. Now, Walter was not a holy unsympathetic man,

like I've been trying to say in the beginning at least. Sure. The lack of treatment and the horrid state of squalor in which patients were forced to live, quote, aroused rejection rather than sympathy or interest. In fact, the thing that basically drove him professionally was a desire to advance the field of neurology and psychology in a way that chronically, mentally ill patients could eventually be treated

and go on to live productive, fulfilling lives. That was his idea. He was like, I don't want to stick them in a place and let them rot. That's not my idea. That's just like prison. His whole idea here was I want them to go on to live a fulfilling life. That was the idea, but my goodness, it got lost.

So Freeman's son, Walter Freeman III, told PBS later, he was repelled by what he saw. He saw the nature of illness, not as something that required sympathy, but as something that required action. Do something. He wanted to solve the problems of psychiatry and he wanted to do it fast. And that's where the problem lies, I think.

There's certain things that can't go on a fast track. I think it was his need to get it done, his need to be the one who did it, his need to be the one that did it now. And it's like, if that wasn't there, I think there would have been a lot more nuance to what he was doing, and it wouldn't have turned out the way it did. But he just wanted to crash through and be the one who fixed it all. And it's just... And it's like, you could have if you just took the time and the patience and the care.

But while his motives may have been to advance his career, like some way and to and there were parts of it that were to Reinforce his ego Essentially self-centered. There was part of him like we're saying that didn't want to see people suffer unnecessarily Of course, it was a lot of things. It was a malgommation of reasons And especially is if he could be the one to do something about it But as far as Walter could see it mental illness had a negative effect on society as well, because he said it removed otherwise very capable individuals from the workforce and made them a burden to themselves and according to him, a burden to others.

He wrote, I looked around me at the hundreds of patients and thought, what a waste of manpower and womenpower, which is kind of a dark way of looking at it. It's a pretty dark way of looking at it. I could, like, for the time period, I suppose that's a very like, just black and white way of looking at it. Like, you could be working and you're not. It's very sterile.

I don't like the idea of calling these people a burden to others. No, it's like, you know what I mean? Like that takes away any of the care that you put into your previous statements of like, you don't wanna see people suffer unnecessarily. Like all that stuff, like I want them to live fulfilling lives. I want them to be happy. Like stop there.

I want them to be able to work if they wanna work. Like sure. But to call them a burden on others and say, like, you know, like, they're a waste of manfathers. Like, ooh, like you went too far. That's putting a lot of them. And now you've taken kind of the, any of the care out of it. But by the early 1930s, he had spent years studying schizophrenia and other chronic mental

illnesses and concluded that such afflictions were organic and not societal or environmental. So he figured they could only be solved through medical procedures. There are subscriptions for everything these days, from streaming services to fitness programs, this, that, and the other thing. Sometimes it really feels impossible to keep tabs on what you're actually paying for every month, and that is why I am such a huge fan of rocket money. Rocket money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions. Monitor's your spending and helps you lower your bills all in one place.

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slash morbid. Good or x is not insurance. Despite those feelings, he had to entertain the nations, growing interest in psychoanalysis in order to succeed in the hospital and university settings that he was really drawn to work in. Right. Because this was around the time when it was really booming that psychoanalysis, Freud, all that stuff was like, that was what everybody was looking at,

not looking at the medical portion of it at all. Right. And he's only wanting to look at the medical portion. If they could only join the board case and talk to each other. Now, while most scientists and psychologists focus their attention on the pathology of behaviors, Walter was really one of the few voices

that were advocating for medical explanation and solution for the symptoms. By the mid-1930s, his routine had him waking up at 4 a.m. he began the day with writing that he would split his time between private practice, his work at the hospital labs, and a teaching position at George Washington University and working as a member of the Mental Health Commission

of the District of Columbia. Wow. Net, that was every day. It's an overloaded plate right there. Yeah. And during this period, his work was focused on charting activity in the brain by injecting patients with thorough trust,

which was a colloidal thorium dioxide that would show up in X-rays and allow the neurologist to identify certain problem areas. Now that is really fucking cool. Very interesting, but thorough class was actually banned in the 1950s, so at the time they did not know. But in the 1950s in the United States, it was banned

because studies found exposure into a vascularly to this solution, causes liver tumors. And inhaling thorium dust can create pancreatic and lung cancer as well. Oh shit. Unfortunately, even though it was banned, the effects can be super long-lasting and can kind of be like time release.

They sometimes don't show up for decades, like 30 to 40 years after you've been exposed. Scary that there's a lot of compounds and chemicals like that. So scary. Pretty gnarly the things that we used and thought we understood in medicine and then only find out it's more dangerous than the ailment. It's being used to detect. Yeah. So scary. And I feel like that happened kind of more a lot. A lot. Oh, it happened a lot because it's all exploration. Right. It was like they didn't know. is to detect, like, so scary. And I feel like that happened kind of more often than not. Oh, it happened a lot, because it's all exploration. Right.

It was like, they didn't know. Now, although he had been steadily increasing his reputation and medical circles around the country, he knew that his ambitions were greater than one person could manage alone. So he's suddenly sitting there saying, okay, I need to work with it to be a little bit of a team player here.

Fortunately, Freeman's ideal partner arrived at George Washington University in 1935. He was a young neurosurgeon named James Winston Watts. In like Walter, James Watts came from a pretty prestigious medical family. He had quickly risen to the top of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. And then he had transferred to Washington DC as well. But also like Freeman, Watts believed in psychosurgery, which is what is now known as neurosurgery. It was known before as psychosurgery.

He believed that was the key to treating and eradicating mental illness. So they were on the same wavelength together. Now, the meeting of these two, what would be pioneers in neuroscience coincided with a growing scientific interest in the function of the frontal lobes of the brain. So they were all the right path. They certainly were,

because in fact in the 1930s and 40s, the frontal lobe was considered to be the most important part of the brain throughout your lifespan. Not just in childhood development. People believed any injury to the frontal lobe in adulthood even could be a problem for ethical behavior, like control, like well power. But research, particularly DO Hebs paper from 1945, which was called Man's Front Lobes,

a critical review. Later began to see and through research that the front lobes are very important to development. And they are vital for building a framework of intelligence, skill building. But once you're developed, that's kind of it. Right. They don't play as huge a role anymore,

not to say they don't play any role. That's just not as big as once thought. They don't play as huge a role anymore, not to say they don't play any role. That's just not as big as once thought. So he said large frontal lobe lesions in children were very much something to worry about or keep an eye on. But in adults, they didn't super affect IQ or ability to make like ethical moral decisions to the extent that could be considered the sole issue. Do you know how the brain does?

No. Okay. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I did not look into that. But remember, we're in the era where they believe this is the most important thing about the brain, the frontal lobes. We know different now that there's many different things that come together to do that.

But back then, frontal lobe was it, regardless of your age. Frontal lobe or boss? Truly. So in their earliest work together, Freeman and Watts conducted experiments that not only confirmed their belief about the function of the frontal lobes, but also what could happen when that section of the brain became impaired. They wrote with an intact brain, an individual is able to foresee, to forecast the results of certain activities. But when the frontal lobes were damaged or

removed surgically, they said the person affected shows a lack of initiative and a tendency to procrastinate. Under such conditions, the patient suffers a loss of self-consciousness and becomes indifferent to the opinions of others. Okay. Interesting. That is interesting. Well, they may have been at the forefront of their field.

Freeman and Watts weren't alone in exploring the ways in which the brain could be surgically altered to correct undesirable behavior. Because in 1935, Egas Monez, who we talked about at the top, a Portuguese neurosurgeon, had been experimenting with a procedure he called the leukotomy. No. A neurosurgical procedure, he believed, could definitely cure certain mental illnesses and other maladies by basically severing the pathways to the frontal lobes of the brain. And a procedure that would eventually become known as the free prefrontal lobotomy, he

drilled holes into the sides or top of the skull to allow access to the frontal lobes, and then he used a scalpel to cut nerve fibers. This was giving me a headache, and he believed sometimes, if I think too much about having a brain, it freaks my brain out. Yeah, I can understand that. You know what I mean? Because you're really not supposed to think about it.

Yeah. You're supposed to be there. Yeah. It's supposed to be there. Yeah. But he believed that the surgery would force the brain to develop new neural pathways and more beneficial emotional responses. So if you sever those ties, it's like forcing a river another way, you know, which I can see where that thought does come from. If you build the dam, it's going to have to go a different way. Yeah. You know. Now, although Walter was skeptical of Moniz's theory, that simply severing the connection would cause the brain

to regrow healthier connections, he couldn't argue with the Portuguese neurosurgeons published results claiming five and six patients were cured of their affliction. Okay. Through the bottomies. Some years later, though, Moniz would clarify that only about 35% of his patients

were cured. Well, another 35% showed some improvement. Yeah. Also, he rarely followed up with patients beyond a few weeks after their surgeries. So if there were any negative effects from the surgeries, he wouldn't have heard about them, and he definitely wouldn't have included them

in his research. And tested. So we're gonna go with that's a way less number than even 35%. Yes, it sounds ethical. So frustrated by American medical industries, increasing interest, and reliance in psychoanalysis over medical treatment for mental illnesses.

Freeman and Watts began considering how the lucotomy could be used in the United States. So they finally got their chance to experiment with the technique in the fall of 1936. They did this on a patient who is a 63 year old housewife named Alice Hammett. She had come to them seeking help with her anxiety. Oh, no. Now, by her own report, Alice had suffered from anxiety, anxiety, insomnia and depression for as long as she could remember. That's true.

Like, she had been hospitalized for nervous breakdowns in the past, but she said nothing alleviated her symptoms. She tried everything. So steadfast in his belief that all mental in this was organic and medical, rather than social and behavioral, Walter deemed Alice to be a perfect candidate for the first ever lobotomy performed in the United States.

Oh. In reality, though, Alice's afflictions were likely definitely mostly behavioral as well as medical. And society. Yeah. She had apparently grown up very well off, very spoiled. Like she herself said, I was a very spoiled child.

Okay. She would throw tantrums to get her way, was given everything she wanted when she did that. So when she entered adulthood, she didn't have coping skills or an ability to express her wants and needs in a healthy way. She would just get mad, upset, and anxious about it. So that was for sure behavioral and societal.

Exactly. I just said society earlier. I don't know if you know that. Yeah, you know, just like society. You know, honestly, that is just the experience of society. So in the years after that, she was experiencing also a lot of unfortunate events in her life on top of this, like, ability to have no coping skills whatsoever. Her two-year-old child had died.

Oh, wow. Her sister had been murdered at the hands of her brother and lost her husband. Yep. And again, at this time, society was not super comfortable with negative emotions. Uh-huh. So Alice learned to keep those anxieties all inside, which led to a long history of having a lot of acting out publicly issues. It got worse and worse her mental illness, where she was exposing herself to the neighbors.

Oh no. verbally abusing her husband, and she started relying on tranquilizers just to make it through the day. Oh, man. Because that's the thing. You push those anxieties down and you don't talk about spending. You keep pushing them. Exactly.

They explode. They do damage inside. So by the time Alice came to the Freeman and the Freeman and Watts, she was anxiety walking at the end of her room. Yeah. They said she wrung her hands, she thrust around during the examination, like she was just an anxious ball of anxiety.

Oh, that's awful. So really with few, if any other options, Alice and her husband consented to be the test case for this procedure. Wow. On September 14th, 1936. And again, she became the first person in the United States to receive an ol' economy.

So at first, the procedures seemed to be a success. Alice was recovering pretty well from surgery. Six days later, though, Freeman received word from Alice's husband that she was still calm. She did the same anxious, but she was having trouble speaking and writing, and that she was, quote, almost too placid. So fortunately, once the swelling and the brain subsided, which took several weeks, of

course, Gary intense procedure, she did return more or less to normal. And I guess, I guess throughout the remainder of her life, though, even though her anxieties were less, like it did less than a lot of that, she did experience a lot of symptoms that were very much probably related to the surgery, like convulsions. Oh, that very much negatively affected her quality of life. But even through all this, they considered this experiment with the Alice a resounding success. And they wasted no time reporting this to their colleagues.

It's so interesting that it did sort of help. Yeah. In a way. Yeah. But it created more issues. Yeah. Because I think it kind of, to me, it almost feels like it dulls the senses a bit. So her anxiety just weren't being felt as intensely. Like it's just dulling a feeling, you know, which is scary. That's very scary. But he became determined at this point to refine the procedure because he wanted to reduce those side effects to make better success rates.

So he didn't want to lose momentum. So Freeman and Watts began looking for a second candidate for surgery just weeks after Alice Hammett. And it feels like too soon when you don't know the... Because you need to refine it. Exactly. And you don't even know yet what she's going to go through down the road. Exactly. So they found a willing participant, 59-year-old bookkeeper, Emma Ager.

So like Hammett, she had struggled with anxiety and depression for most of her life. Her symptoms were so extreme at times that she suffered hallucinations. She had a profound and irrational fear of being poisoned. That was something she was dealing with. And apparently during the procedure, doing her lobotomy, the leukotome broke down. And the leukotome was the surgical tool used to perform the lobotomy. It was invented in the 1940s by Canadian neurosurgeon by the name of Dr. Kenneth McKenzie. And it almost looks like a syringe type shape with a long protrusion at the end

that gets inserted into the hole in the skull and then into the brain itself. Like a syringe, there's a plunger on the back and this is used to kind of like send the wire thing into the brain to do the work. Okay. Then the doctor uses it to rotate it and that cores out some brain tissue.

Ooh, it broke down during this procedure. That's not good. But they got it to work and the surgery was considered a success with Walter later noting that the patient was responsive and cheerful after surgery. But he said, although entirely lacking in spontaneity. So the success of Emma Ager's surgery very much encouraged Freeman and Watts

and they wanted to continue employing monizis with the economy, which Freeman had re-christened the lobotomy. I wonder what made him want to change it. Yeah, I think he just wanted to make it his own. Yeah, I mean, Wilson, he wanted to change it to be the transorbital lobotomy so he could do it quicker.

That's why he changed that. He didn't want the like recovery times. He didn't want hospital stays he wanted to be able to do this inpatient, do a lot of them. And there's just certain things that you can't do like that. And after this success, patients were lined up to receive what Freeman and Watts were touting as a groundbreaking treatment.

It shows you how bad mental illness can be that people were so desperate to get their skull and brain dug into just to get relief. Yeah, it's horrible. It's horrible. It's horrible to show you how bad it can be. And because people were, they were desperately asking to have their skull opened up

and their brain scrambled to get relief. When people say crippling anxiety, I don't think they necessarily understand crippling. Like willing to have your brain scrambled to get relief. When people say crippling anxiety, I don't think they necessarily understand crippling. Like willing to have your brain scrambled with a random tool just for relief. That's like an electric toothbrush just to get any kind of relief. No, I can't imagine.

Because that's the thing. I mean, like I struggle with anxiety like now today, but I can't imagine what it felt like back then when they didn't have an understanding of it. Oh yeah, because nobody's understanding. Because taking the time to know. If you have a panic attack afterwards, you're like, oh my God, like I feel like I was just

completely out of control of my own body and to feel like that every single day I can't imagine. And to have people probably look at you like, oh, like what's she going through? Like that's a burden. Yeah, like that's annoying. And you feel like a burden, you know, like that's awful. Of like, oh, like what's she going to do? Exactly. You're like, that's a burden. Yeah, like that's annoying. And then you feel like a burden, you know, like that's awful. Of course, it's like a cycle.

So you can see why people wear, but at the same time, like you said, like holy shit, people were like, just lining up for this. Oh yeah, lining up for it. And it didn't, and they were getting successes out of it. What they were doing as successes and reporting as successes. And it didn't take long though, until these perfect outcomes turned into bad outcomes.

For instance, one early patient who received the surgery to treat chronic depression was transformed into a chronic talker. Oh, wow. Who would literally not stop speaking. Like could not control it. Like it was uncontrollable speaking. And also became like obsessively compelled to spend hours every day rowing on the Potomac River, like just rowing, rowing, rowing.

Another patient seen for treatment of her anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder came out of surgery, cured her for symptoms, but just a few weeks later, both her depression and compulsive behaviors returned stronger and more disabling than they were before. Really? So there was a mix of outcomes. It's interesting how they're doing the same procedure on people, but it's affecting them differently. I think the brain is so interesting.

It's not refined. And it's not the same procedure. I'm sure you're not severing the same connections every time soon. You're getting different results. This is a wildly the same procedure. I'm sure you're not severing the same connections every time soon. You're getting different results. This is a wildly erratic procedure, right, in and of itself. Because that's the thing. So they're, like you said, they're going through the eyeball and they're, they're, they're not doing that yet.

He hasn't even made the transorbital lobotomy yet. He's just drilling. He's drilling his monizes lobotomy. Yeah. So he can see where he's severing. I mean, he, to an extent. Okay. Yeah. But this is just the lobotomy. Yeah. So he can see where he's severing? I mean, he to an extent. Okay. Yeah. Okay. But this is just the lobotomy. Okay. The lobotomy ended up itself as absurd. Like, it's just in wild. But because he doesn't even created the transorbital lobotomy. Okay. Okay. By the winter of

1937, Freeman and Watts had begun making the rounds on the lecture circuit, talking about their successes, the potential of the technique to eradicate mental illness. But, and while some in the field were pretty receptive to the experiments and results, a lot of people in the fields of neurology and psychiatry were very skeptical, and suggested that the positive results could just be as easily be as a result of surgical shock and the results of the procedure, then would be of the procedure itself. Which sounds like it was the case because it wears off. At first, they're like, oh, wow, I'm cured. And then a couple of weeks later, they start having all these other issues.

Freeman and Watts continued right on, though, in their work of psychosurgery, quote-unquote. And they were very confident that they were on the verge of a major advancement in this field. So in the late 1930s, the medical and psychiatric fields were very split among the majority who believed that the mind, a nebulous concept referring just to like thought and cognition, that's what the mind is. Could and should be created as separate from the body.

And then there were those like Freeman and Watts who were convinced that medical science, not talk therapy was the only way to address it mental illness. Now the problem wasn't that one was right and one was wrong, they were both right to some extent, and both wrong to some extent. Each side believed that they were right

and the other one was wrong. The only way. And that it was this like, you know, issue intersection here in impasse that created a lot of tension between skeptics and advocates of the prefrontal lobotomy and drove Freeman and Watts's work in the field. Now determine to prove their skeptics wrong. Freeman and Watts revisited some of the earlier cases in which the patient showed no signs of improvement.

And this wasn't really helping their argument that it was working. And in one case, there was a woman who was plagued with fears of germs and contamination. And the second surgery on her frontal lobes led to a very difficult recovery for her. Her thinking was confused and inattentive following the surgery. for her and her thinking was confused and inattentive following the surgery. In another case, it was a woman who had been struggling for years with suicidal ideation. Her depression only got way worse after the second surgery and she tried to end her life by setting herself on fire after the second surgery. So it's bad now.

And it's like, now it should have been, I mean, done, done, move on. Something else has got to be done. Yeah, go back to your papers. But no, by the end of the 1930s, the setbacks experienced by Freeman and Watts were compounded when their friend and colleague, Egasmo Niz was attacked in his office.

Now remember, Egasmo Niz created the lobotomies. Yes. In 1939, he was attacked by a former patient who shot him four times. I caused him to be paralyzed and he ended up having to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Wow. So, like, this is showing you, you're ruining people's lives here. Like, you're not helping.

This is not helping. You have a former patient coming to, like, like express his not in a correct way, but this should tell you something. Now Freeman and Watts experienced another major setback in the summer of 1941, when a very infamous lobotomy was performed on a very well-known family member, Rosemary Kennedy. And it very much failed to produce the desired outcome and would eventually be remembered publicly as one of their, if not their greatest failures. Oh, man.

And we will be getting into the lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy in part two because I really want to get into that one because it's pretty horrific. I only know, I would say like the baseline of that entire story and what I do know is horrible, so. It's horrific. I can't imagine what we're gonna talk about. It's horrific, what talk about me. Did to her. It is.

It is. And what these people did to her. It's, because she was very young when she got her free. She was 23. Yeah. So we're gonna do that. And if you look up, I encourage you before you get to part two, look up photos of Rosemary Kennedy. What a fucking cool chick. She looks like there's a picture of her like smoking a cigar. She's wearing this like Fedora and she's just like she's also a knockout. Oh, yeah. Stunning. Yeah, stunning beauty. And it's like

and she and everyone and obviously we will get to it in part two. Everyone who knew her in her personal life said she had one of the most likable personalities. I remember hearing that. She struggled. And we'll talk about why she struggled. And she had some issues that should have been addressed. And they did try to address. I don't know if they did a great job. But it sounds like talk therapy would have been a better version. I think she needed a mix of many things and they just didn't give her the proper thing. But everyone who knew her in her personal life

said like, yeah, she struggled, she had some issues, you know? Of course, she could be a little unpredictable because of her issues, but they said her personality was fucking top notch. Like teachers loved her, people who knew her loved her. Like she was just a very likable human being, and she was funny. She had like a good sense of humor.

And she was just like a badass. Like she was gonna be a cool chick. They killed her without killing her. Oh, 100%. And as we'll see, she knew what happens later. And she... Yeah, that's heartbreaking. So we will get into that in part two,

because it's a pretty heavy part. Yeah, but this is the beginning of Walter Freeman. I've always been interested in lobotomies and like that whole, I've been interested in his career. It's interesting. It's horrifying. It's like a nightmare to me. So yeah, hopefully you guys are finding this is fascinating and horrifying as I did. I find it super fascinating especially just even what we've covered be at worst. Even what we've covered in part one. So I'm excited is not the word. I'm anxious to get to part two. Part two is gonna be rough, so-

Yeah, fine. All right, well, with that being said, we do hope that you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But that's a way that you perform lobotomies on people because guess what, it didn't work. Yikes, no. Should've been stopped right in the beginning.

Yes, help it right in its tracks. Just go to therapy. It's great. Hey, Prime members! You can listen to Morvid, Early, and Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.