Citation Needed - Walter Freeman, and the Lobotomy

Episode Date: January 29, 2020

Walter Jackson Freeman II (November 14, 1895 – May 31, 1972) was an American physician who specialized in lobotomy.[1]

You didn't like the episode where they go to gem school? Meh. Like, I don't know, what's the purpose? I mean, the purpose of the season is money. But Rebecca Sugar doesn't need the money. The heart is gone. Hey, guys. Hey, Eli. Um, you okay, buddy? Yeah, it never been better. How about you? Why are you talking buddy? Yeah, it never been better. How about you?

Why are you talking weird? Like what? Like you watch an episode of two broke girls. Did you try to watch an episode of two broke girls? Out Tom. Tom, Tom, he's fine. I just lobotomized him. You lobotomized him? Yep. Just got, you know, a little tired of a shenanigans. Didn't I best friends? It's more like a work, Quintin's situation. See? See? Perfect. I don't know, Cecil. Won't this keep him from being able to work on our show?

Really? What did he do on your show? What did he do on any of your shows? Well, he, uh, it's a really good point. He, uh, if you guys been getting this snow, this winter, it's crazy, right? The snow. I know he does something, right? He's... Yeah, no. Yeah, he uh...

hee... Damn it. You guys want to go see a Transformers movie? I could see a Transformers movie. Okay, that's not the point. What about his quality of life? Don't be ridiculous. He's never been happier. Hey Eli, want to play cards against humanity, buddy? Oh boy, do I?

I literally cannot imagine a better time. Rest my case, folks. Rest my case. Uh, actually, can we do apples to apples? I don't like the swears in cards against humanity. Make sure you can, buddy. Absolutely, apples to apples it is. Awesome.

Good call, Cecil. Hello and welcome to Sitation Needed. The podcast where we choose to subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet. And that's how it works now. I'm Eli and I'll be inserting information directly into your brain tonight. But I'll need some jagged instruments. First up, two men who remember life before germ theory, Noah and Cecil. I mean, life probably isn't the right term, but yes.

Yes. People had a much better sense of humor is back then. I'll tell you. Ha ha ha ha ha. And also joining us tonight. Two men who've been rubbing some tussin in it for way too long. Tom and Heath.

They not too long to write amount of time. Eli, thank you. For me, it's not long, actually not long. Tom and Heath. They not too long, the right amount of time. Eli, thank you. For me, it's not long, actually not long. In my house, we were kind of poor. We rubbed Sam's club bit Tussin in it. Yeah. Fobit Tussin. Before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment

to thank our patrons. If you tune in every week and would like us not to start to death, why not give us as little as a dollar an episode over at patreon.com forward slash citation pod. Or you can just not support the arts. It's fine. All we do is make you smile and love you. Why would you give us as little as a dollar over patreon.com slash citation pod? Hundreds of hours of content, variety of subjects, worthless to you. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine! And if you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Cecil, what person, place,

thing, concept, phenomenon, or event. Will we be talking about today? Today we're gonna be talking about Walter Freeman. And Tom, you've extracted the core facts, so you're ready to tickle our brains. Well, if I wasn't, I have wasted literal minutes of specialized training. Ha, ha, ha. So who was Walter Freeman? Walter Freeman was the father of the lobotomy.

A procedure which seemed like a very good idea for a very short time, in which, well, not the worst thing a doctor would do during the 1930s and 40s is at least on that list. Walter Freeman's an example of the incredible amount of damage that can be done by one person with a lot of personality, an ability to manipulate the press, and some fervently held, spectacularly dangerous ideas. A lesson, none of our listeners in the military needed to learn right now.

Yeah, right. Like shame this example wasn't available to us in 2016. It's a Walter Freeman was born in 1895 in Philadelphia. His grandfather was an accomplished civil war surgeon. Well accomplished civil war surgeon generally means something like, you know, could remove limbs slightly faster than patients probably blood out. But Williams grandfather was like 1800s legit. He removed the tumor from the jaw of President Grover Cleveland,

who survived long enough for history to forget about him. He was the president of the American Medical Association, even experimented with early forms of CPR. Freeman's father was a well-regarded ear, nose, and throat doctor, so William Freeman may have felt some pressure to perform. Oh, okay, but let's keep this in perspective. The early form of CPR was just

punching you in the heart for having demons. Yeah. I had to. All right, after graduating from, was then Yale College in 1916. Freeman went on to study neurology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. Notice here that I did not say

surgery. He did not study that. So I spicken that one for later. I went on to further study psychiatry and neurology in Europe and he earned a PhD in neurology from George Washington University. Yeah, but back then defending your thesis was basically the scene from Rocky where Burgess Meredith made Stallone catch a chicken with his bare hands. So it's not that prestigious. So as a young doctor, Freeman was appalled at the state of care, given his psychiatric patients. And here I have to say, I agree with him on this. At this point in history, the idea that psychiatric illnesses had a biological base in the brain.

That was a radical idea. At mental hospitals, more commonly called asylums, they offered ineffective barbaric treatments when they bothered to offer any treatments at all. These were more warehouses for the mentally ill than places where people had any hope of getting real care. Asylums offered as treatment, long periods of forced restraint with manacles and straight jackets,

being pummeled by high pressure cold water, being wrapped up and tied in a thick tight sheet and then submerged in ice water. Where they, which is, or not far off, the forcible removal of teeth and tonsils, and intentionally infecting patients with malaria, and even more ineffective, talk there. And it was sexist too. Female patients were getting hand jobs from what I understand,

but men had to just like live with hysteria, no hand job. He's punching a hole in drywall, is the male orgasm. I've told you this. Alright, so Freeman was appalled at the wasted lives that the people confined to these asylum. And he was similarly dejected in learning of the treatment options being offered. He believed that the basis for psychiatric disorders lay in the brain.

And he began his early work with the most cutting-edge treatments then available. So one of these treatments was insulin therapy. The idea was this, if you give someone that doesn't need insulin, like a whole bunch of insulin, they will go into convulsions, laps into a coma, and hopefully not die. After a while, if they regained consciousness, the thinking was that you had just reset their brain, and so they were now cured.

This of course was fucking nuts and didn't work at all and had more than a few drawbacks. Yeah, several drawbacks. Nobody was like, hey, why don't we just beat people into commas and save the insulin because we actually have a thing for that. This is like, did you try unplugging your router of the early 1900s? What is that? So another word is crazy.

There's some orange insulin. I think he's flooded. Keep pumping. Keep pumping. Keep pumping. Pump it. Well, we'll get to the Joe when they try to jumpstart people in a minute. So another treatment for him in tried was metrazol therapy.

And this thinking went something like this. Mental illness at epilepsy could not coexist in the same person at the same time. What? I got no idea how they got to that thinking, but that was the idea. All right, so I noticed that none of the faces people make during the epileptic seizures are the like, you know, sad frowny face. So I've got no idea.

So the drug metrosol induces just fucking horrific seizures. So if you give somebody who is mentally ill metrosol and then they have just like a whole shit ton of seizures, you would drive the crazy from them. Now this obviously didn't work and the seizures from metrosol, they were so severe that one study found that fully 43% of the patients induced into metrosol seizures fractured at least one of their vertebrae while seizing. She's, oh God, the 1940s, right? Like when medicine was just trying to shit out,

killing people and then going home to never think about those people again. Like these to treat this like a stuck drawer. Just bang that fucker in, it'll gulp back in, no, what the fuck, don't worry. Just hit it, you're like the fucking fons of fons in here. Exactly, you're the fucking fucking funds of funds in here. Exactly. You're the fucking funds of medicine.

So Freeman also looked into electroconvulsive therapies. ECT is actually still in use today and what has its own troubling history and some promising and interesting things happening both currently and in related research relative to like deep brain stimulation. Suffice it to say here that in Freeman's early career, ECT was basically jamming a fork into the socket while the patient held it under their tongue,

and then hoping you accidentally fried the right part of their brain in addition to all of their childhood memories. So, better than the insulin and the metrosol, but still that great. I gotta tell you guys, with ECT and ketamine turning out to be like amazing treatments for depression in recent years, I think we should put more scientific research into the possibilities of boiled-down cough syrup. Like I've figured something out. I've figured something out. I've got to be honest, man. Premeditated malaria has sounded better in better ratio.

Premed is still on the lookout for the holy grail of psychiatric fixes. So he attended a conference in London where he observed that demonstration of chimpanzees whose frontal lobes had been surgically damaged. The chimps were docile and inactive, exactly how we wanted our mental patients. So one of the attendees of the conference, not Freeman actually, but a guy named Agaz Moni, as I've probably terribly mispronounced that,

went back home to Portugal and began immediately experimenting using this technique on mentally ill patients in his charge. Okay, the chimps, they were just like damaged in general. Why wouldn't they try to do more specific than just damaged? They're just brain surgery on chimps and some guys like, I don't know, fuck it up and see what happens. Take it from there.

It's not wrong. So when Freeman heard about Moniz, he thought, well, fuck it, I guess if it's good enough for the Portuguese and a couple of chimps, it's good enough for the massive influx of terribly mentally ill soldiers overwhelming our asylum's here at home. So, basket cracking.

But remember, Freeman was not a surgeon. So, Freeman elicity the aid of his buddy, a surgeon named James Watts to help mount right well Yeah, cuz if an untrained person did it chopping out parts of people's brains might have negative consequences So I love this so together they practiced on cadavers and they modified monies this technique a little bit while monies Used a wire scoop to take out melon ball like corks from his patients brains Scootie LZ's you can't be a doctor and have a tool called scoop. I'm sorry, how of a salad though?

Freeman and Watts adapted the technique. Their method involved drilling as many as six holes into their patient's skulls, then surgically severing the connection between the frontal lobe and the thalamus. Because it was Freeman's belief that the thalamus was in charge of emotion. And that mentally ill people had such uncontrollable,

powerful emotions that their minds were unable to keep up and process them all. Their emotions were thus all the mentally ill could think about. So Freeman created a technique to literally separate the emotional center of the brain from the thinky bits. From here on out, things actually go from bad

at too much, much worse. Yeah, said like a guy with normal emotions. Well, I need to go hold an ice cream scoop over the stove. So let's take a break for a little something. We like to call it apropos of nothing. Dr. Watts. Walter Freeman, you old dog, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. Don't mind if I do!

Well, so let's get right into it Watts. I'm thinking of developing a revolutionary new procedure. You are. Indeed I am! What if you could treat maladies of the mind by removing it? Removing what? The mind. You know, scoop out the bad bits, just scoop them.

Mm-hmm. I see, yes. Care for some steak then. Oh, yes, thank you very much, always. Uh, I was hoping since this is your area of expertise, you could show me where it is. Oh, where what is that? The brain.

Oh, hmm, yeah, it's up here in the skull up top. The skull, of course, the human body is a marvel, I must say. Anyway, what do you say? Wanna scoop out some brains and see if it cures people? Why not, I'm in. Yes. That a boy.

See you around, Freeman. Indeed. And thanks again for seeing me while you're performing surgery. Oh, not at all. Could I have some more anesthesia? No, shut up. Oh, okay, should be the worst. And we're back. When we left off, we hadn't gotten all the medicine right. Like we have today. Don't think about it. So, that was Tom, what did the confident professionals

at the top of their field do next? Stop. Well Freeman's new technique was called a lobotomy. He called it by Freeman, who named it, that's what he named it. His first patient was a housewife suffering from something called agitated depression and insomnia. So, no problem, just probably your brain parts

are talking to each other too much. So Freeman and Watts scheduled her for the first ever frontal lobotomy. Freeman kept a journal. So the patient's last words before the procedure are part of his story now. According to his own journal, the patient's last words before surgery were, quote,

who is that man? What does he want here? What's he going to do to me? Tell him to go away. Oh, I don't want to see him. Jesus. This was again followed by according to the doctor's own journal, a screen.

Jesus. When would he use that? Like, he's talking to his assistant. OK, so the brain slicing is going great. A quick question. Yeah, read it back to me. Right before the surgery, the lady said, get away from me.

I don't want this scream. Okay. Hey, Doc, why does your journal read like a lovecraft novel? Why is that? All right, so here's how that first lobotomy was performed. So first they drilled the aforementioned six holes into the woman's skull. Then they used a tool they called a lukatome, which was inserted into the brain through each of the six holes.

The plunger is depressed on the tool, just stands out two wires from each side, and the tool, hold on, there's a plunger. There's a plunger in my head. It's definitely making a slide whistle noise. In mind, it was making like the noise when Pac-Man hits a ghost. You know, it was like, I just have to the plunger is depressed. The wires spring out of this thing. Then they rotate it around a bit.

It's this and they play a brain core like an ice core, but made of brain. And the freeman of Watts incidentally they shared this work, meaning that at some point, Freeman, who was not a surgeon was like, come on, man, let me have a turn and then what's left like they're arguing over a puppet like squeezing it more than right haha haha haha

they did a lot of these things together and on each one of them they shared the work and might be the only one who is shipping Watson Freeman like super hard right now you are not you are not sir by Freeman's account the surgery was a rousing success uh... the patients survived for five whole years post surgery probably because No, you are not. To my Freemants account, the surgery was a rousing success.

The patients survived for five whole years, post-surgery, probably because they rinsed out her brain core holes with some saline before stitching her head back up. And her husband said, the last five years were the best of her life. He said that because her entire 11 word vocabulary was, quote, these five years have been the best of my entire life.

And, well, and also, like been the best of my entire life. And well, and also like the baseline she's comparing to his housewife in the 40s. So, you know, not knowing what the hell is going on probably is a problem. So buoyed by this single dubious and entirely anecdotal success, freeman of what's went on as a bottomizing spree. But now without making some refinements, go on as the Lucatone. Yeah, no, yeah, no, that gone. You'll be happy to hear this heath gone was the Luka tone to dumb with that with its wire brain-coring thing. And Innen was a tool they fashioned, which the Washington Post article I read describes

as quote, resembling a butter knife. Yeah. They used more holes in the brain now, and then they entered the skull from the sides, rather than, you know, top down. Oh, guys, guys, we're making this harder than it has to be. This is, all right, and she looks like Gallagher, the comedian, when we scooped out of that. Well, and there. We're gonna, we're gonna cut open the sides, right?

As it was an improvement with this butter knife. So, freebie to watch, open a lucrative lobotomy practice. You know, as long as they get everyone to pay in a period of time, you know what they still recognize what money is. Sure. Well, you're not even wrong. They operated on just about anybody.

Anybody who came in, they even got an alcoholic lawyer and Rhodes scholar that they just found drunk at a bar one, E. Chris Maseve, for real. They just brought him in, lobotomized him. Some patients had to be lobotomized more than once because I guess they didn't like butter knife, their brains out just right,

and other patients just had fuck it and died from it. Sorry, wanna go back to this? How was this lucrative? Were they taking money out of people's pockets after they did them? Because if they did, this is just season negative 41 of dexter time

ha ha ha ha ha ha they're about to like try a sport what the fuck is happening ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha which was heavily frowned upon as physicians were not at this time allowed to advertise their procedures directly. Wait, so the part they were frowning on wasn't the part where they scooped out people's brains, okay? Wow. So to get around this, Freeman set up booths at medical conventions with like eye-popping, gruesome displays, and lobotomized animals to catch the eye of the press who would seize upon Freeman as a great story, and thus afforded him free publicity. Now, less you think that I am in any way mischaracterizing here

is this is Freeman himself describing his advertising technique. Quote, I found the technique of getting notice in the papers. It was to arrive a day or two ahead of the opening of the convention and install the exhibit in the most graphic manner and then be alert for prowling newsmen. That night our monkey died at Butwatts and I made the headlines even though we did not get

an award. Jesus. He's got a spokesmodel just sticking a fork into a socket over and over. There must be a better way. Look at this guy doing. Noah Keith and I worked New York City toy fair for years. A lobotomized monkey is downright classy compared to the show we've seen. Sorry, man.

That includes shit. We've seen shit. Literal shit. Lot of shit. Ah, literal shit. Freeman's accounting of his success would, if it were an anyway verifiable, be both appalling by today's standards and astonishing by the standards of the day So by his reckoning, Freeman and Watts lobotomies yielded good results 52% of the time

32% of the results were fair 13% poor and 3% even poorer meaning those guys is just making a words for it. You can't just All right. Good, fair? Seriously, if those numbers were true, which again, they are not true. But if they were, they would have been much better than the standard treatment of the day, which hovered around 0% and probably only got worse from there. Yeah, well, right.

And before people start wondering how a success rate can be negative, let's remember that they were treating depression with fucking malaria. So... Like, you're still sad, but now you broke your back from a seizure too. Like, yeah. But there was no accounting. There were no real measures.

There were no standards being used. Real abses were common. Many lobotomized patients need to be retought how to eat and use the bathroom. Jesus. They pissed on their shoes. They made passes at the nurses. They stared numbly for hours at nothing.

They were rendered void of character and personality, and these were likely what Freeman was counting as the successes. Pistons on their shoes, voided character personality, passes it, are we sure these people weren't just baby boomers? Oh, no. No, by 1945, even Freeman was starting to wonder if maybe there was a better way. I mean,

sure, rendering the mentally ill, compliance, and quiet, or, you know, barring that dead. That solved a lot of problems, but drilling all those pesky brain holes was a lot of work. And even Freeman had to admit that there was rather a lot of brain damage going on. His research and other options led him to an Italian scientist named Amaro Fiambeerty, terribly mispronounced it, who was doing his own lobotomies by entering the brain through the relatively thin part of the skull behind the eye socket and then using alcohol to kill the brain tissue behind it. All right, wait. So at some point Freeman actually said, you know what the problem is?

I'm not stabbing him in the eye when I scoop out all their long division and ability to push. That would be... So Freeman adapted this Italian technique, and again, he practiced it on cadavers, using at first a literal ice pick from his kitchen and a little hammer to pierce the skull, which would then kind of just squiggle about a bit

until he thought he probably ice picked away all the bad juju from the cadaver. The satisfy of this technique he practiced on dead people, and which he developed in secret, away from the prying eyes of his surgeon friend Watts. Freeman performed his first transorbital lobotomy in 1946 on a woman named Ellen Ionesco, and he did eight more of these in rapid succession. The woman after the seventh one was like, okay, only one more because I can't tie my starship eating carrots subterranean vaulting. Who would you say that?

I would say. All right. Now, this part of the story isn't entirely clear. It's not clear if Watts was called in to see one of these procedures or if he like walked in on Freeman like a dumb teenager who didn't latch the door all the way, but when Watts saw Freeman performing ice-pick brain surgery, unlicensed, undraped, without mask or gloves, just in his office, he was fucking incensed.

He insisted that Freeman cease doing any brain stabbing that he wasn't himself a part of. Freeman and Watts parted way shortly thereafter. Watts kicks open the door. What is this skull duggery? See, you can't let these kind of fights break up a friendship, right? No, please get off me. Come here, you guys. Stop it.

Please get off of me and stop doing brain surgery on dead people. Always rousing this one. Nope, always rousing. The jokes. Me at that ice pick. All right, from then on, Freeman was a lobotomy machine. He would perform as many as 20 lobotomies in a day. He would send his patients home in cabs an hour after the

thoughts had just been stabbed out of it. You know what I'm talking about? It's a super pool, he won't mind. You know what I'm talking about? Do you mind? He doesn't mind. There's not enough brain damage to make Uber pool appealing.

He's just not. He's not a pro. That's not a car you want someone to lick the window. He's here. And there's still no pee in the pool rule. Let's just say that still applies in the Uber pool. Thank you. Freeman enjoyed the shock value that his lobotomies had on others. He paused his procedures to take pictures.

On at least one occasion, his young son, Freeman helped him perform the procedure. Patience, this is this part you mentioned, the patients undergoing this procedure, they were incapacitated by being shocked into stillness with ECT. And Williamson Frank wrote of his experience unlike, bring your son to evil doctor workday saying, quote quote I was there to hold the person's legs down. Oh my god I went for a ride when he threw the switch Financial opportunity right there you could have done one of those you could have done the surgeries outside of the IGA Had kids slip the quarter into the skull hole. You just drill This is like something from Coney Island, absolutely.

Or action park, one or the other, yeah. So Freeman became the lobotomy ambassador after that. He taught the transorbital lobotomy to doctors, not surgeons, at dozens of hospitals across 23 states. While many doctors had reservations about the technique, they had more patients than they had options and Freeman was a consummate showman effective ambassador he himself performed between three to five thousand lobotomies and was responsible for popularizing the technique across the u.s. which performed as many as fifty thousand of the perches wow to destroy that many brains today you you need a TikTok channel, so... Toopsy. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha very poorly. So more than once, more than one time he did this, he wiggled his ice

pick tool so hard it broke off inside the patient's brain. Oh, Jesus. In front of crowds, he would perform show boat lobotomies, sometimes using two ice picks and bolt hands at the same time. He's doing 50 at a time blindfolded like Bobby Fisher, Jim Brown, Harlan Globetrot, his music is playing. Well, on one occasion, when he stopped to pose for a fucking picture, he bumped his brain to all still embedded in the fucking skull of the patient, and he sent it deep

into the guy's midbrain, killing him instantly. That's a selfie really. Just like, ah, I should pull the rabbit out of the guy's skull. Hey, there we go. I'm on a trip. He starts doing them all juggling a bowling ball and a chainsaw. His assistants throw an ice picks at him

and he's catching them in people's eye sockets, really. But my next trick, I'll strap one of my patients to this speeding board. I'm just standing right over here. Where did the cranial fluid come from? So one of Freeman's most famous failures was the sister of John F. Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy. Rosemary Kennedy was the first patient of Freeman's who was mentally disabled.

Well, going into it, yeah. She didn't improve from having her brains getting scrambled and she was left severely mentally and physically disabled, like worse than going in, worse than before. Freeman also lobotomized famed actress Frances Farmer, who was something of a success story of Freeman's. Actually, she survived the procedure,

that's always a plus, and was left with the detached and flat demeanor following the procedure. The youngest patient lobotomized by Freeman was four years old. Oh, at least 490 people died outright from the procedure. In 1967, Helen Mortensen, who Freeman had lobotomized twice before, came back and asked to have the procedure done again, a third time. Freeman consented and severed a blood vessel killing her. And that was actually the last transorbital

lobotomy he performed. Yeah, her last words were there we go. Third times the charm. I'm out. So despite all of the horrors and ethical monstrosities in this story, Freeman's legacy is somewhat unclear actually. There is a case to be made that the popularization of the very idea that mental illness

is an illness of a physical organ, a problem with organic causes and therefore organic solutions, and that this idea had a long lasting and obviously positive medical and social impact. That's something we all benefit from today. And of course, there is the boring counter argument that, oh, no matter what you learn from brutal, self-aggrandizing human medical experimentation, you can't erase the horror of those injustices. Still, I say, you can't scramble brains if you aren't willing to break a few skulls. Oh, Jesus. And Tom, if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be?

Well, I learned it halfway through and then got the lobotomy, Eli, so I don't actually remember. Yeah. And are you ready for the quiz? Let's do it. All right, Tom, which of the following was Freeman's favorite song to play during his lobotomy surgeries?

A, I saw her standing there. Saw, it's a Beatles song. B, brain drops keep falling on my head. C, this is see. This is America. This is the good song, it's by college, Cambina. I have to go with brain drops, keep falling on my head because it's fucking amazing. That is correct. Alright, I got a tough one for you.

Tom, what is the most annoying thing about lobotomies? A, being at Walter Freeman's house and just needing to break up some ice. I don't know. No. B, the fact that it should really be called a loveectomy, they're taking shit out. That doesn't, anyway. Or C, how many of its recipients voted in 2016, Goddamn it.

Oh my God. I love that Noah's the only one who would be annoyed by a lobotomy just like God damn it Like that's done You adding space that's stupid I Have to I have to go with the pedantic answer B. It's just you with you It's always go with the pedantic answer. You're usually gonna be right well done Tom all right Tom

What was the show about this called the TV show? A, Grace Furnology. That's good. Pick and mortality. C, mind shunter, or D, braining bad. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha all time. Absolutely. Walter White. There you go.

Alright. Well or no? Cecil was the last to go. So Cecil wins. Alright. And Eli hasn't gone in a long fucking time. So Eli goes next. How's that? Yeah. Get ready. He's the crappiest. We learned our fucking lesson. I thought.

Oh, can't wait to find the crappiest. Because we learned our fucking lesson, I thought. Oh, can't believe it. We find out that Sweden doesn't exist. It's gonna be the big issue. Spoilers. All right, well for Tom, Noah, Cecil, and Heath, I'm Eli. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then, I will be an expert on something else.

You better believe it. Between now and then, you can check out Cecil's pornographic snapchat, Perian Thrust. You can check out Tom and Heath's show, Get Your Own Fries on Verve. And of course, Noah has a blog. Oh, damn it I do, Noah. He's not gonna blog. Is Verve a real thing?

It is. And if you'd like to help keep the show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod. Or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past show notes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes. We'll check you guys.

Just keep checking them. You just get a little bottomy. Just keep checking them. I double the sand. You said, tripping fun and ice kick. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out the past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes, be sure to check out citationpod.com. And remember, don't worry, science and medicine

have everything right now. Try not to think too much about it. And don't worry, science and medicine have everything right now. Try not to think too much about it. OK, Eli, your turn. The worst person to drive you to school would be... Helen Keller. That's a good one, buddy.

Because she can't see. Because she can't see. You're dribbling applesauce here. Come here. It's a game. Lean over. Play in the game.