Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 413: Lobotomies Part I - The Cathartic and the Emetic

Episode Date: June 13, 2020

On the first of a two part series, we cover one of the strangest medical procedures of the 20th century: lobotomies. Join us as we explore the life of the man who popularized the procedure and just how the medical community came to think that it was a good idea in the first place.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. Right above your glass. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Hello. My name is...

My name is Robert Milkman. I'm 91 years old. I have had... I've had seven lobotomies. Oh my. And I'll tell you... I ain't afraid of lamps anymore. But my main question is...

You two fine, beautiful young women. Uh-huh. What is a lamp? Well, indeed. It's something that provides light, sir. Welcome to the last... Welcome to the last podcast on the left, everyone. I am Benz.

I'm the star in it, Marcus. And of course, we have recently lobotomized Henry Zabrowski. Someone get deducted in here with his brain broom. I need to get all these ghosts up out of the holes of the folds of my brain. So some of you might be wondering why is he lobotomized?

Well, that's probably a good indicator on what we're going to talk about today. The next sentence I have been thinking about for about 23 hours now, and I'm really excited to say it. This episode really took it out of me. All right, that's the only thing I've ever wanted to say in my life.

Lobotomy! This episode really took it out of me. We're talking lobotomies. The alliteration is really making me heart. It's not really as much alliteration as it is a sideways rhyme. Can I call it alliteration? Can I get one? Can I get one thing, please?

I thought a sideways rhyme is when you have sex with the best man at your wedding. What? Marcus had sex with his own brother. Oh my God. That's a real sideways rhyme. So in continuance of our Summer of Strange series, we're going to cover one of the strangest

medical procedures of the 20th century. On this series, we're going in-depth on the history of the lobotomy. Hell yeah. I tell you what, I don't want a lobotomy, but you could definitely bring me a lobotomy. Absolutely. This is a fun thing about brats. It's a sausage.

Absolutely, and of course Henry only eats brats by shoving them up his nose until they hit his brain. I fold up my eyelid. I just get the brat like right in the meat between my eyeball and the bridge of my nose, and I get a little hammer. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

And I just force it in between the lobes. Henry, what's your new diet? I've been snorting food. For those of you who don't know, the lobotomy was a highly discredited medical procedure that was practiced mostly in the United States from the 1930s until the early 60s

to the tune of 40,000 lobotomies performed in this country alone. Hold on a second. We had the capability to go to the moon and yet we were still performing lobotomies which is just shoving a pole up into his nose.

There are people to this day that sing the praises of the lobotomy. There is still, it's still technically kinda around. You can get one if you want one, Kissel. I don't. The best part is that what you do, what's so nice about lobotomy is that it's not like you get rid of all

your problems. It's like your problems are on a parade in front of you and you're behind a glass wall and you watch all of your problems interact on the inside of your brain but you yourself feel nothing. Now I do like the idea of a free puppet show but I think I would rather get, I would

rather have a sounding rod shoved up my dick hole than have a rod shoved up and poking my brain. There's a lot of people that say that. I know. Well it's a little more complicated than that. As far as what a lobotomy did, the procedure involved removing cores from the frontal

lobe of the patient's brain with a surgical instrument in an attempt to cure mental disorders after all other treatments had failed or at least that's how it started. In the words of the man who became the face of the lobotomy, lobotomies were a form of human

salvage, not salvation. But of course, as more lobotomies were performed, the idea of who was salvage and who wasn't expanded. So literally there were like aunt Nancy is going a little nuts. Have we tried wiggling her brain?

Like what, I don't understand like I'm sure we'll get into the cause there must be some logic behind this. There is absolutely logic behind it. And I would assume now defunct logic. Yes. There was a startling amount of logic. It's like the amount of logic became part of the problem

because what they viewed it, because in the beginning this was supposed to be for extreme cases. This is supposed to be with the terms like catatonic schizophrenia. People, they said they were locked in their own bodies. People with highly evolved neuroses, all of the stuff. People with

PTSD, especially after World War Two. There's a bunch of people talk about the people that suffered from what was called shell shock in various time periods. But then I guess called like bullet fever at this time period just softening it or something. Where they took

all these WW2 vets that were supposed to be heroes right? We were supposed to believe commonly that they, you know, they fought the biggest villains of all time. They did. And then they came back as heroes. But the ones that didn't come back like great in great shape, especially from all the

shit that they saw. Especially the people that liberated the concentration camps. All the people who saw the real stuff. A lot of them and getting a little bit of that ding ding ding ding in order to not feel those feelings. And we ended up losing a whole generation of soldiers to this disease.

To this procedure. It is wild. Could have done without that, sir. I mean, eventually lobotomies came to be for people that were a bit much. Okay. If they're inconvenient, if their anxieties and their depression

was just too much to deal with. Okay. Then lobotomy came into the scene. Now the procedure evolved over the years. Starting as an actual surgery that required the presence of a neurosurgeon. It was treated very seriously.

But as lobotomies gained popularity, any old Joe psychiatrist with an ice pick and a hammer was able to use a specialized instrument called a leukotome to cut away the offending brain matter after taking what amounted to a weekend

seminar. We could all think, technically the funniest, most charming scientist since the man who invented the MyPillow, Walter Freeman for this reason. I'm going to go out and say they actually had to stop using the leukotome, Marcus, because they kept

breaking. Which is why they had to make they literally had to use an ice pick for a long period of time because it was sturdy enough to take the mallet that it would take to pop the bone right behind your eyeball in order to get into your fucking brain meat. And this is before they used to

just drill into the sides of your fucking head, like it had chocolate in it. I always love when my podiatrist is jamming an ice pick up my nose right after he shows me his pussy like Sharon Stone did. Yeah, but the best part about this pussy

is that I can make it a cock. No while lobotomies did usually eliminate some or all of the symptoms of extreme anxiety and depression, the side effects were wildly unpredictable, usually leaving patients infantilized, unmotivated

messes with a penchant for bizarre, repetitive motions and absent-minded masturbation. But according Walter Freeman, literally it's him just be like Don't worry, that is just them expressing their innermost natural selves and do not worry, they often stop

masturbating two to five years after the treatment. Okay, well honestly now that I think about it yes I did sigh and discuss because it is traumatic, but how fun is that? You have a free pass, you can be like how you can be a baby, you can just jerk off wherever, you can be like I've been lobotomized

which is really freedom. Before the lobotomy, you were like an adult. Right. That's the problem. Yeah, but I mean everyone loved the movie Benjamin Button. Aging. That was because of the romance. And no one wants to fuck

a baby except for the people that run our government. Yeah, well there's a lot of people in the government. Well some called lobotomy the amputation of the soul. But even so, the procedure was so respected in its time that the creator was actually awarded

the Nobel Prize in 1949. Although the Nobel committee has since admitted that this was indeed a bit of a goof-a-mole. Oh that was an oopsie? Yeah, it's an oopsie-doopsie. But speaking of the people who made the lobotomy what it was, our source today

is The Lobotomist by Jack L. High, which is the fascinating story of not the man who created the lobotomy, but the man who brought the procedure to the mainstream. Also, YouTube's got a great length of videos of lobotomy procedures

that I ended up watching. This shit's fucking, it is rough. A lot of people that had received lobotomies, you could see them attempt to be people, and then you can also see the documentary The Lobotomist, which was done by PBS, and it's also very, very interesting to just see just

how fun Walter Freeman made this. Like he made it fun. Yeah, and of course Porky Pig, he's the lobotomless. Alright, I'm gonna go commit suicide, guys, so it's been a nice run. I love you guys. You are. Hashtag cancelled.

That's why I will cancel you. Yes, the man who made the lobotomy popular was named Walter Freeman, and although he was not a surgeon. Come on! This is like a big surgery! He was a medical doctor,

yes? This man can't even fix your hang nail, and he's jamming shit up to your brain. Well, his manic, mad scientist energy and showmanship gave him everything he needed to make the act of cutting pieces out of a patient's brain

sound reasonable to the medical community. Hell of a salesman! And I'm gonna go on and say, it's not just reasonable. It's just a good time, and it's a thing that you can have your kids do, you can teach your children how to do it, it's absolutely easy. You hold your hands, you put them on a stool, ping, ping, ping. Next thing you know,

Grandma is not hitting everybody anymore. This is just, it's a fun afternoon. Well, that could save lives, Grandma was very abusive. Well, if I were to describe Walter Freeman in person, I'd say that he was psychotically strange to the point of being cartoonish.

This man needs a lobotomy! That is all I thought about this entire time as I was reading, this man needs a lobotomy. But he wasn't necessarily evil in the way that other mad scientists like Yosef Mengele were evil. In other words,

nobody would say that Walter Freeman would have been a serial killer in another life, like we said with Mengele. But what Walter Freeman shares with Mengele is a sociopathic ambition for recognition and innovation. Okay, so

question, was this man's intention, was he well intentioned? Yes, he was. Well, at the, in it's very, very beginning. Yeah. He saw a, he saw a gape in the medical. Yeah, it's gape.

Don't say gape. No, I like gape. But he wanted to fill up that gape with an invention that would be able to cure all mental illness. Right. So the problem is, is that once you go from, like I see all of these people that are

essentially abandoned by the system, like left in mental asylum, to rot, to die in beds alone, and he was like there's gotta be a way to fix it, but once he's like and we've got to franchise it. Once he got into that level then you're like, oh, this has gone past

helping people. We're not in the burger business. We're in the real estate business. Well, this guy, I mean Freeman, he saw lobotomy as a way to help mental patients. Yes. Okay. But his main motivation for bringing the procedure to the mainstream was more about making a name for himself

in the medical community. He was like what's my thing gonna be? That's what Walter Freeman was always about, because this is a time when medical science, or when mental health science was gaining traction, he's like, I want to put my stamp on this. What's my stamp gonna be? But there were so many things

that we haven't knocked out yet, cancer. I can think of that. Like, there's so many other things you can put a stamp on. It's pretty important to do. It is vitally important, Marcus. We all three agree with that. Yes. However, no respected medical professional outside of Nazi Germany looked at Mengele's work

with anything other than revulsion. Lobotomies, however, were performed at the most prestigious hospitals in America, from Johns Hopkins to the Mayo Clinic. They bought it. Jesus, and of course the Mayo Clinic. You gotta be white to go there

because you know how much white people love Mayo. I am sorry. Can I take your line? I apologize for everything. Yeah, I'll tell you what though. Dr. Hellman really helped me with a lot of my feet problems. Let's see, the study

and treatment of mental health has always been years behind the study and treatment of physical health. And all you need to do is look at how our country approaches mental health treatment today to see that the lag still exists. See, while the heyday of physical experimentation

when it came to the human body was the 19th century, experiments on the human brain lasted well into the 20th. In our parent's lifetime. Damn. In fact, we still don't really understand the human brain as much as we pretend

to. For example, my psychiatrist can't tell you exactly why the medication I've taken for bipolar disorder for the last 15 years also works for seizure patients. All he can do is tell me that it works. And if it suddenly stops working, which it might

at any time. Don't even scare us, Marcus. It's never going to stop working. But that's why we have the emergency net in the studio. We know what to do. We know what to do for Marcus. Yeah, it might stop working tomorrow. It might stop working when I'm 65.

It might never stop working. But if it does stop working, all my psychiatrist can do is just kind of shrug and prescribe me something else. Honestly, have you tried to use a masturbation machine, Mr. Parks? I will say, Marcus, when it does stop working,

we're going to have a great three days before you go to the crash. To watch fucking dog meat full fucking bipolar freak out that that first night is going to be so much fun. We're going to be coyote ugly. We're going to fucking steal a car and drive to fucking Atlantic City. I'm

really excited for that period of time. But then once it hits like 9am the next morning and things are getting scary and Marcus saying he's like, I know the truth. There's wires in the ceiling that are like explaining to me about how shadows are real. Then we're like, ah, well, get the net.

So to understand how we got to the lobotomy we've got to understand the history of medical science when it comes to mental health in America. Oh, so we're just going to cover that? We're just going to cover the history of mental health in America.

Not completely. We're going to focus specifically on one small part of that. We're going to focus on psychosurgery which is a super cool name for physical surgery used to treat mental illness. It's also the only way

you can get a member of ICP into a hospital so tell them, no dude, we're going to remove cancer with this psychosurgery. I'm a great malenko. And then they'll go. Otherwise they're very scared of the duck. Now I'm thinking of Kisses album Psycho Circus

that everyone is so excited about which is just simply horrible. God, it was the fucking worst. We waited a year. I remember everyone was so excited. We be CDs sold out immediately. Every fucking comic book had six psychosurcus ads in it.

But it was two discs of shit. They did give you more shit. I do remember that. It was two discs. It's all garbage, but cool. Now the seeds for psychosurgery lied with Benjamin Rush who opened the first psychiatric ward in the United States in 1752.

Rush believed that mental disorders were caused by overactive circulation in the brain. So he invented devices to treat that diagnosis. It seems to me that the problem is the blood. So that's why we remove

the blood. You guys as much as humanly possible. You take all the blood out of my brain? Absolutely. As you can see already irrational, you huge goon. Then I will have to apply the sucking tubes to these cuts that will make to your fucking eyeballs.

That's what you deserve. Oh man, I think that surgery really worked. I feel great. One device that Benjamin Rush used was called the tranquilizer. With that one, lunatics as Rush called them were strapped to a chair

and a box was put over the head to dull the senses. Was everyone just a fucking comic book character back then? What are these terms? I, to be honest, I really could use this. There's like a part of me just to keep me off the phone.

The idea of just being stretched would strap with you. Like yeah, a couple hours with a box in your head is going to feel like, kind of, you know, like it's going to be panic inducing, but if I've paid for it, I like it. You have to. Actually, that was a whole South Park episode where they just put boxes on everyone's heads to keep them from looking at phones. I remember that one. I just saw

that recently. Well, Rush believed that putting boxes on everyone's heads and strapping them with leather straps to a fucking chair would slow blood circulation to the brain and treat the underlying mental illness. And notice I can make it smile with this little Sharpie here.

Notice the two eyes, the nose, and here comes the smiley face. Ah, I can see it's working. Another device, the Jirator. Okay, how come these are all pornographic? Everything sounds like it's going to make a girl squirt.

Man, they had machines that made girl squirt to keep them from fucking, to keep them from complaining about the fact that they're getting hit all the time. Yeah, no, literally when women started, when women are like, I want to go to work, they're like, what if we make you cum? Well, I'll cum

once and then I'll go to work. Well, the Jirator involved nothing more than strapping a patient to a horizontal board and just spinning them around in circles over and over and over again just to improve circulation. Because if you spin them around in circles, all the blood

goes to the head and that improves the circulation and that helps the mental illness. It's fun if you're at a rodeo bar riding the bull so you can get a free beer if you hold on for eight seconds. Marcus, do you think at a height of your freak out, like of a bunch of people, like at a height of a freak out. Got it. Of a bunch of big guys

and white coats grabbed you, it strapped you to a board and fucking spun you in a circle for like 15, 20 minutes. Right. Do you think you might actually be kind of chilled out? Could not think of anything that would make me more agitated. Okay. Alright. Yeah. Then I crowdsourced that. Well, then I guess we're still

on to the net because that's the only treatment that seems to be working at this point. I like the net. Well, the next one she gets, so... He likes it. I look forward to the net. Well, Rush, he was also one of the very few people in the world at the time who actually believed

that mental illness could be treated. This was actually a step forward. Okay. It was definitely a step up from just putting them in shackles and locking them in a fucking room until they died, which was what they were doing to mentally ill people before this. It's a low bar. Very low bar, but it's still

above that. Yeah. Now, psychosurgery itself began in earnest in the late 19th century with doctors such as William Williams Keane, who began performing experimental surgery on the brains of mental patients in an attempt to cure hallucinations,

dementia, and quote unquote, emotional irritability. What I loved about William Williams Keane was that he was five foot two, and he had to do all of the surgery on a ladder. He would do it all on a ladder and do it. There's nothing in the little box to stand on. Like, he stood on like a fucking like

apple cart. Oh, he's like Michael Bloomberg. Yeah. They literally, and the thing would they always say be like, yes, he is short of stature, but if you could see by his stout hands and his thick torso, he definitely has the strength to be a man of learning. Real like, you just said he's fat. You just said he's short and fat, and that's

what makes him a genius, and I'm with him. No, William Williams Keane was no quack, or at least he wasn't considered so at the time. He removed a tumor from President Grover Cleveland's jaw using a century old mouth

retractor. This shit, this is fucking they cut, they cut the whole chunk of his jaw out, right? This is back and this is not nothing's fun about this. Right. They cut the whole fucking chunk of jaw out and then put a piece of hard rubber in his face

to keep the structure of it. Can you imagine what kind of pain that creates for the rest of your life? Damn. And he was the president. Wow. The president. I do like the idea of a president not being able to talk. That is very fun.

And this guy was also on the team that diagnosed Franklin Roosevelt's Pogio. He was like a presidential doctor. Let me take a look at this. Hey, Mr. President, unfortunately to say that me on the board here, I've all decided we've looked at the data here and we have we figured out you suffer from

spaghetti legs. Wow. That explains it. But with regular folk Keen got a little more experimental. In 1887 he bored a hole into the skull of a man named Theodore Daviler. And then

he probed into the skull with an ungloved finger. Probably didn't even fucking wash his hands before our hand. Wait, are we talking about Jeffrey Dahmer? And then Keen fucking manually pulled out a tumor from the guy's brain before stitching the whole thing

up with cat gut. Oh, God. With what? Cat gut. Cat gut? Cat gut. The guts of a cat? Well, it's cat. It's a, they used to... It's like a wire. Yeah, it's like a wire. Cat gut. This was actually the first successful removal of a brain tumor in American history.

It worked. The patient lived for another 30 years after that with no major side effects. Good. That is just one of those things that's amazing about the human body where you can do this. Like, it does take quite a bit to kill the human body. And the idea

of just riffling around on a guy's brain and just pulling out a lump and being like we got one! And then he gets to just fucking, he just lives his life. I don't think he was like an engineer. You know what I mean? I don't think that he was building bridges and shit. He built horse carts. Oh! I mean, he was

like an engineer then. But, in other words, you know Keen was a legitimate surgeon in many ways. But Keen's grandson, Walter Freeman, the man who would popularize the lobotomy, he was not a legitimate surgeon.

Besides being the grandson of a surgeon, Walter Freeman was also the son of a surgeon. Yet Freeman was cursed to be a sickly child. When Freeman was a baby, his grandfather removed 30 enlarged lymph nodes from his neck

which caused paralysis in certain muscles in his body, which gave him a droop on one shoulder, causing one side of his head to permanently be cocked to the side. He kind of made him look like he was flirting with you all the time. So you're telling me the guy who invented the lobotomy is Holden McNeely?

What, in the world from Wizard and the Bruiser? How big was his neck to have 30 30 lymph noids in there? Lymph noids? What is this, a Domino's commercial? I have no clue. I don't know how you could keep taking

all these chunks out. But it feels like if they keep coming, at some point if I had that many chunks I would just kind of work them into my outfits and draw little faces on them. You have to. Freeman also had a tonsillectomy, diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, typhoid

fever, whooping cough, mumps and pink eye. Damn. All before he reached adolescence. In addition to all this, he was also for reasons known only to him terrified of horses his entire life. They're like bigger, stronger, meaner cats.

I cannot capsule thee, I cannot stand them. You know, I actually, I can understand the fear of horses, they're very scary, you ride on them, they're huge. I'm very scared of horses, but I'll go up on a horse to make sure Natalie stays

sexually attracted to me. You really think, you think that you on a horse, scared shitless, crying openly, is going to make Natalie attracted to you more. Natalie's a stunt woman, alright? Anything besides like, because she wants me to like climb up to big ropes, she wants me to

find the sky. She did that one time, she did that one time and then you just dangled your feet four inches above the ground and went back down. Yep, but I went up on the horse because every single time you say no to a challenge, you make one droplet of moisture leave a woman's vagina. Every single time you show how weak you are

I have to keep pretending and technically I'm getting stronger because of it. Okay, it must be working. Like many sickly children though, Freeman channeled his bedridden boredom into creative pursuits. As a child he wrote a story about two steamships named the cathartic

and the emetic, having found both terms in his father's medical library. What Freeman didn't know though was that back then, the origin of the word cathartic, cathartic means to evacuate one's bowels, which as we all know can be highly cathartic.

Love it, I did not know that. Yeah, as far as emetic went that was a term for a compound used to induce vomiting, which meant that the young Freeman had written a story featuring two ships named, respectively the diarrhea and the puke.

And the Santa Maria. And he had no idea and he got so upset when he found out that he didn't know he was highly, highly embarrassed but now they went ahead and named two lines on the royal Caribbean cruise line the diarrhea and the puke. Oh, I love that can't wait to go back on a cruise. Yeah, nothing sounds more fucking

oh wow, I can't wait to be trapped on a boat with everybody fucking shitting and puking and coughing Oh, it's so much fun, it's so relaxing. I don't think I can fit on a cruise so it's out of the cards for me. But even so, Walter Freeman never lost his way with words.

What follows now is a brief excerpt of a description of his father's home doctor's office in a paper Freeman wrote in college. A hydraulic fan made gurgling noises, not unlike strangulation and half a dozen sprays

pointed their nozzles at my father like a firing squad. Nearby was an oven, just large enough to bake a baby. What? What? What was that last line? It was measured on me and it was a constant threat to me and my brothers and sisters

that we would become casseroles. But I tell you what that made my dad a real acerole. So there was like an easy baby bake oven? What is going on? It just said it was big enough to put a baby in there. Yeah, but why would you? I always think about that. But doctor, why are

you using baby as a measurement when it comes to ovens? How else would I get rid of all of these children? But speaking of that father, Walter Freeman Sr. was a picture of the detached patriarch. Even though he had seven children,

the elder Freeman was always terribly formal with all of his kids, described as shy, awkward, and humorless. See, that is where you have to find the middle ground. On one side, you got the always new dad. Like my friend's dad

who would just walk out with his tidy bodies, go take a shit with the door open. Yeah, I had a new dad friend. We all know it's their house. They can do what they want. My father used to sit in the bikini briefs, but at least he covered his dick and balls. With his gut.

Yes, he would cover his, the gut would cover his dick and balls, and he sat out there, and he was allowed in our home, he was allowed to be dressed like that in front of my friends. It was just when Jackie's friends came that he had to put clothes on, and he was always very deeply resentful of it. Well, that makes sense. This man, he's now passed away, but he also

used to identify his clothes by what animal shirt he was gonna wear. So it was like a dear, dear Monday. Moose, oh, must be Thursday. Well, this guy, Freeman Sr., he was so fucking strange that he never quite knew how to handle his emotions.

When Walter Jr. was caught skipping school, the elder, Walter, turned his anger inward, produced a whip in front of his son, and started flagellating himself instead of his son. It's like a fucking camera inside the Mike Pence office right now when the polling

numbers come in, and he's just like, I haven't done enough, I haven't done enough. That's gotta be so scary when Dad starts fucking beating his own ass. Actually, hey man, being on the other side of that, I like the idea. I wish my dad would have beat the fuck out of himself every day.

Not that my father was a bad guy. But what if he just sat there and stared at you the entire time? No emotion, no reaction. My Pornhub searches would be different. Well, Freeman Jr.

also said that when it came time for the sex talk, the elder Freeman taught him the facts of life using an ancient gynecology textbook complete with horrific, yet admittedly beautiful, 19th century illustrations of venereal disease.

This is, it's like the idea of Dr. Frankenstein. I love the idea of, because you know what this also does sort of sound like the fake growing up life of Dr. Evil, the way he talked about his father in the awesome horror movies. But the idea of this kind of like clinical

aloof man with an ancient tone, like explaining 18th century versions of the humors and the valves inside of a woman's pussy as he's with a stick and also at the same time kind of fucking

with your sexuality by being like, but if you do this, you also get like cauliflower dick. You could get sad balls. Because if you get sad balls, you know, it's very difficult to turn that around. It really is. But this is

the 1930s, 40s? No, this is like late 1800s, early 1900s. So maybe like, yeah around early 1900s. So in his dad's defense, at least he's trying. Like he's trying to like, you know how many dads were just like, you put it in one it's dry, hopefully it gets wet, otherwise

you don't tell anyone. Like, you know how many dads were just like not doing anything? So I mean, he was working out. But Freeman also said he only tried it once because Freeman was the oldest boy and none of the other boys got the talk at all because that's how horrible it was for the dad. I see. Yeah, all the old thing my father ever told me, he said,

Hey, when it rains, make sure you wear a slicker. Thank you for the euphemism, dad. Now, not surprisingly, this upbringing did not prepare Walter Freeman for a life of popularity in college. He and his roommate were so socially awkward that

the other kids called them, for reasons unknown, Minnie and Lizzie. It's cute. Yeah, it's kind of cute. I mean, they listen to each other. Yeah, he did have a very he always had friends. That's the thing. He was a very strange guy, but he always had friends. He could always find someone to follow. I mean,

it's unbelievable, the idea that strange people could find friendship. I don't it's almost like, yeah, I've never met a strange man. It's almost like we all bonded over a film called Cannibal Holocaust. I don't understand that. Walter also wasn't the most attentive of students. While studying medicine, he almost

killed himself twice in the lab on accident, once by almost blowing himself up by mixing together the wrong chemicals and once by absentmindedly putting a pipette covered in cyanide in his own mouth. You simply wouldn't believe it. There was a food fight at lunch today and

I just I saw the pie coming to me, but I also noticed at the same time that my shoe was untied. So when I lint down to tie my shoe, next thing you know that pie hid old Mrs. Werther in the face and everyone was laughing and laughing and laughing. So I went there and I removed one of her breasts so I could

see how her breasts work afterwards. So this dude is just one experiment away from being the nutty professor. He's close to making flubber. He is close to making flubber, but then he turned a bunch of people into flubber. You know what I mean? I see. That ain't going to help you win a basketball game.

Once World War I broke out though, Walter Freeman joined the army as a medic but not on the battlefield. Instead, he spent his time studying the stool samples of army cooks, checking their feces for hookworms and parasites.

And for this, Freeman earned the nickname Honey Dipper. Okay. Oh my god. There was World War I was going on. World War I. And he was like, I'll take care of your shit. Like what is going on?

Think about this, right? We got butthole doctors, all of the other worst kind of doctors in the world. Someone's got to be interested in this shit. So in some way, it is kind of helpful. He wanted to figure out how the digestive tracts of all the soldiers were working. But it's just something about what motivates a man to go

once you've just done eating lunch, you ate lunch and then you're looking at the chef and then the only thing you're thinking is like, I wonder what a shit looks like. Like if you like that, if you are like that, it makes you, I guess that's technically the difference between us and what makes doctors doctors.

I agree, man, because you can just see him sifting through the shit, taking it out, putting something in his mouth like he's a monkey cleaning off another monkey with lice. Oh, this is terribly better. Have you ever had worms? Marcus, the answer to that is I can't even

express the amount of no to that. What? No, I have never had worms. Have you had worms? Yeah, I had worms all the time when I was a kid. What? Okay. I'm not doing this. This is a thing. He's about to snap me. He needs a net. We got to get the net. I honestly feel like maybe some of his

current problems have to do with the fucking, the fact that his guts were filled with worms in most of his childhood, but we'll get to that. That's a whole other episode. If you're a dirt kid and you're digging all the time, you're going to get worms. No, you're not going to get worms. I got worms. I used to go outside. I mean, I wasn't like a shut-in.

My mom was obsessed with worms. She always said that if I didn't wear shoes outside, I was going to get worms. But I think that was because my mom also had a thing about dirty feet. Yeah, this is all bull? Well, all right. I'm happy that the worms are gone. Did you name them? Did you poop them out? No, no, no, no.

They show up on your skin. Ringworms, hookworms. Oh, ringworm. Okay, that's different. Ringworm is different. Everybody who's played football had fucking ringworm. Yeah, and wrestlers had ringworm. That's why I was thinking you guys were like, why are you guys being so fucking weird? Because I thought your guts were full of a...

Yeah, I thought your fucking guts were filled with living, squirming worms. I could see it being true. Well, I think it says more about how you to perceive me than it does about my own worm. You said the sentence what, you never had worms? How am I supposed to...

Yes, of course, I know ringworms. Sure, yes, I got it. So after the war, Walter attended medical school and after much aimless wandering through disciplines, he found what he believed to be his calling. Walter Freeman was going to be a neurologist. Ooh.

Once Freeman became a doctor, though, he continued doing odd shit. For example, one of his first patients was a young man who showed up at Freeman's office with an inflamed two-mesant penis dark with blood that had been unable to circulate back

into the body. What? Apparently, the young man had fitted himself with a primitive cock ring and the results had been disastrous. What did he use? What was it? I don't know. Some kind of bolt from a machine. It must have been something like that

or a giant's ring that he stole from a grave. So Freeman did his doctorly duties, filed the ring down and removed the ring with forceps. But when the young man asked for the return of the embarrassing relic, Freeman said no. No, you don't get it. You don't get it back.

You were irresponsible with it. Instead, Freeman engraved his family crest on the makeshift cock ring, hung it from a gold chain necklace and wore it for the rest of his life. You know, I would also say that's an overreaction.

It is, it's a thing. You know what I mean? It is definitely an art piece. It's a fun story to bring to life. You want to say this? Say what this is? I cut myself a guy's penis once. Really? Yep. Hey, I noticed that you were being pretty, like, wild before.

Like, you were saying something about how you wanted to get three appetizers at lunch or something? Yeah, yeah. They have a $2.99 special at Snapplebees. Let me get my ice pick. I'm going to teach you something. I'm going to teach you something about overeating. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I've never felt worse, but I've also never felt better.

That's still a bottom. I know. Well, Freeman was also one of those dudes who was weirdly obsessed with his own beard at a time when beards were not fashionable amongst his peers. Freeman loved his beard so much that he would write essays

about how fucking great beards were. Henry, if you may. Those who have never grown beards cannot appreciate the delicious feeling of a breeze blowing through it on a warm summer day as the car covers the miles. There is the softest titillation

like the caress of a beautiful woman. And when a beautiful woman reaches up with a little hesitation and strokes the beard or even gives it a shy little tug. Well, it has to be felt to be appreciated.

I'm still wondering why you're using baby as a measurement for an oven. This man is so he's very eccentric. Very eccentric. I have a beard. I love beards, no problem with him. But I don't like beard culture. I watched that show Beard Wars

or Mustache Wars. It just looks like a bunch of neo-Nazis trying to cover up their hatred. It is a hobby. But I do think we have professional beard grower listeners. And so the people that do do that, I mean good. Good on ya.

I love it. That's fine. Now, after being a work-a-day doctor for a while Freeman continued his education of the brain in Rome where he worked at the clinic of Giovanni Mingazzini the founder of pathological anatomy. Damn. Not only did I learn

all about the human brain, but I also I can make a calzone that just won't just won't quit. Ooh, a calzone that just won't quit. Ooh, that's bringing me to Fleafer Town. Hell yeah. That's out of bounds. I don't know. Flip flop. Woo! At Giovanni Mingazzini's clinic

Walter Freeman had the opportunity to study the brain of an elephant during an autopsy exercise. However, after pathologists spent four hours attacking the elephant skull with a crowbar a saw and a pickaxe the brain was a bloody mess by the time

the skull was open. They destroyed it. Unfortunately, I think we're going to have to go get some dynamite. I'm going to want to see this brain really big and I'll just look at parts of it. Why did they shuck it like it was an oyster? They had to get through the fucking brain. An elephant skull is very thick.

I know, but aren't they supposed to be doctors? This is the beginning. Everybody's got to start somewhere. Not doctors. You know, doctors need to start they need to start at home base. They need to hit a home run immediately. After Rome, Freeman moved

to Washington D.C. in 1924. There, he made friends with Alex Herglicka, who you might remember from our Giant Humanoids episode as the man at the Smithsonian who covered up evidence of Giant Native Americans in order to defend his own eugenic beliefs.

Problematic. I can't believe we're having a crossover episode right now. Seriously, they've all crossed over. Since Giant Humanoids all of these episodes have crossed over. This is so strange. What a crazy time to be alive.

Damn. I could only imagine if someone made one of those gigantic boards of like every episode and every person that we've talked about and linked them all through like with pieces of yarn. That is a spider web right there. All of these people are connected.

So weird. Well, Freeman and Herglicka became fast friends. And in what sounds like a childish play date Herglicka showed Freeman the skull of an authentic colonial American in exchange for letting Herglicka measure Freeman's skull. I get the friendship.

Honestly. I tell you what, and I don't mean a skull shame here, but you can lose a couple inches on this. Just let me get my eyes. Well, besides just friendships, Freeman also found his wife in DC. But only after losing a different girlfriend

to future CIA director Alan Dulles. No kidding. Yeah, that fucking piece of shit. Think about the that woman who dated the who almost dated the fucking the inventor of the lobotomy and then dated and married

the worst one of the worst people in human American history. Yeah, Alan Dulles. Hey, Pamela, what's your type sociopath? Oh, as far as where Freeman began his psychiatric career, it all started at St. Elizabeth's

established in 1866 as America's first psychiatric hospital. By the time of Walter Freeman, St. Elizabeth's specialized in neuro syphilis. See, today syphilis isn't quite the boogeyman that it once was, because it's easily treatable with nothing more

than penicillin, at least until syphilis becomes resistant to penicillin in the future and makes an ugly comeback. Get the net. Mark is just losing it. Can't put out the fucking net. The science backs me up on this. I don't. I know. I'm scared now. I can't hear all of this.

I can't hear weaponized syphilis, all right? All I can see is just it becoming an actual giant bug. You know what I mean? Like a physical giant thing that flies around and just attacks people on the street. The overprescription of antibiotics is a real problem in this country.

Get the net. Get the net. Back then syphilis led to dementia, psychosis, incontinence, spasms, horrific facial disfigurements, even worse genital disfigurements, and eventually a terrifying death at the hands of the one disease

the Native Americans gave to us. That's just pure revenge. Yeah. Syphilis was unknown in Europe before it came from North America. Really? It first showed up in Spain right after the first Spanish explorers came back from the New World.

That's very interesting. Have you seen the scene in Capone? Craig Rowan has been sharing the scene of the new Tom Hardy Capone movie that does not look good. But there's a scene where Tom Hardy as Capone shits, this is a dramatic scene,

he shits his pants as Capone because he's dying of syphilis. And the whole thing and him going to sit in a big juicy fucking pile of his own shit. And I think they thought there was like he's gonna get an Oscar for this.

He probably will. You know that was directed by the same guy who did the Fantastic Four movie? Really? It makes sense though, it tracks. Not the greatest, not the greatest superhero film. No. But in Walter's time, a full 20% of mental patients

in hospitals were neuro syphilis sufferers, which meant that Walter Freeman had plenty to work with. And the stream of patients seemed endless. Between 1903 and 1933, the number of mental patients in the United States doubled. And for the most part

the hospitals where they were stashed were pretty much filthy warehouses where the mentally ill were sheltered without treatment until they died. Not necessarily shackling them and throwing them in holes without windows, but still just big buildings put them there until they fucking croak. What is the name of that

cult documentary that features the mentally ill Titty Cut Follies? Titty Cut Follies. Ooh boy, you gotta watch this fucking movie. I must. Titty Cut Follies. Titty Cut Follies is, it shows a little bit of a section.

I'm certain, I think that this has come up several times on last podcast in terms over the years, but it's just a section of what it was like inside of these asylums. Where they just let people rot. Horrible. Yeah. So what was due, why was this

was this because of the war that they had a huge increase? Like what was the reason that they doubled up in size? Or were they just diagnosing stuff for the first time? It was neuro syphilis, alcoholism was a really big thing. A lot of people would be just absolutely fucking out of control drunks, alcohol induced

psychosis, that was a big thing. But yeah, of course, there was also shell shock veterans from World War One, a lot of guys with PTSD. And of course, they were starting to say like, okay, we can treat mental illness. Let's just not lock our difficult daughter in the fucking

attic until she dies. Let's send her to a hospital. Okay, theoretically that is a better choice. Theoretically, despite the horrible conditions patients dealt with every day, Freeman didn't have much sympathy. Instead he found them disgusting and pitiful and considered their general

untidiness and particularly their shoddy footwear to be repellent. That is the real crux here, right? Walter Freeman's personality is kind of born in that, in my mind, where you look at it where he, there's people that want to see, I think that in some

fashion, he was emotionally affected seeing people in this state. But the way he talked about it was just straight up this is an eyesore. And this is essentially fucking gross. And I'm sick of looking at it. And we have to figure out a way to do it.

And he saw essentially dollar bills. Yeah, so he watched it. He's like, this is my issue. I am going to find a way to flip these guys out of this place into a place that not only will make me money

but also make me incredibly famous. Just to put this in my terms so I can understand along with the audience, when I worked at Taco Bell, I began to hate the chalupa. Yeah, I began to hate the, it was when the crunchy burrito was starting to come out, I hated having to grill it and stuff.

I couldn't go to Taco Bell, I got fired after two weeks so I couldn't go to Taco Bell two weeks after that because I was still upset but then I couldn't go back. Wow, you only lasted to that. You hated it after a week. They fired me. I would have stayed working. But yeah, so I understand. You see it over and over and over and over again. Yeah. But that's

his job. Maybe he shouldn't have hated his patients. It's not a hatred. It's more, it's a it's not necessarily a hatred. Disgust. It's a disgust, which, you know, disgust and hatred are cousins but not necessarily the same thing. They fucking. Them cousins fucking.

And that's the thing. Freeman was looking for a way to make his mark in the annals of medical history and in his studies of mental patients he began to see correlations between mental disease and physical maladies. You know, correlation is not necessarily causation.

For example, he found that schizophrenics were more likely to contract tuberculosis while paranoics were more likely to develop cancer. Hmm. What perplexed him most however was that physically, there was no difference between a schizophrenics brain

and a non schizophrenics brain. At least when you took the brains out of the skulls and compared them on a table. Honestly, I was pulling these brains out just laughing, whistling and stuff and I'm looking at these brains and the first thing I consider has been like, why is this not filled with spiders?

He legitimately thought I mean, I guess it does make some sort of like surface level sense, right? Yeah. Is it you figure that people that are suffering in real life would have like a physical mark, like there would be something physical in the brain and they don't know what to do with it. But they spent a lot of time just fucking

poking around all them gushy bits just looking at folds and licking them and doing weird zapping them and weighing them and cutting them up. Yeah, I mean it does follow, it's like what Henry said earlier about, you know, logic. They followed the logic too far. Cause, you know, logically you know, you look at, if someone

gets punched it creates a bruise. Sure. You know, if someone has a cancer or if they have a tumor, you know, you, if someone has cancer, you see a tumor. Right. So they, logically if someone has schizophrenia, the brain should be all fucked up. Full of spiders. But it was not. Full of spiders, but it wasn't. A schizophrenic

brain looks exactly like a non-schizophrenic brain. Okay. Now, while Freeman did pay attention to what other psychiatrists were doing at the time he was more concerned with finding his own methods of treatment. His first attempt took a cue from Benjamin Rush

and Freeman used air pressure to manipulate the level of oxygen in the bloodstream to improve brain function. Oh, this is not going to end well. No. Amazingly though, after applying the equivalent of three atmospheres of air pressure to a patient with catatonic

schizophrenia, Freeman still couldn't get the patient to speak but he could force him to eat a sandwich. There we go. I'm a real jurid focal. What is this? It's really interesting to see the way he

affected people with these weird techniques. Have you ever seen the movie Awakenings with Robert De Niro? Oh, yeah. But he would do these weird experiments and get catatonic people. People like all of the footage of this stuff is just fucking it's really unfortunate and it's really,

really scary also of people all jacked up, not being able to move at all but then they put them in a pressure machine and they don't know why but using like shit like with Unit 731 they would like go and they would have motor functions again

and work like robots and eat and act around and walk around and then go once it kind of wore off or they took them out of the tanks, they would kind of go back to their catatonic state. Well, they didn't know why but it only lasted 25 minutes. They don't know why but like the air pressure, it would last

25 minutes and then back to catatonia. What kind of sandwich are we talking here? I mean, to be honest, you get me a nice Rubin? Oh, Rubin. Give me a Rubin or a Cuban. I've been thinking about a Cuban. I've been thinking a lot about a big old Italian sub recently. I think it was

because of a tweet that John Gabers did the other day and he was talking about making a statue about an Italian sandwich and I've been thinking about a big old Italian sandwich with prosciutto and some fucking, you get fucking cheese in there and you get the fucking sweet peppers in there and the fucking vinegar in there. Marcus, I think we got to flip it. We got to get the net for Henry.

I am going insane. With the air pressure scheme, that wasn't Freeman's only aggressive technique. When it came to spinal taps, Freeman always seemed a little too impatient to take his time doing one of the most painful procedures

known to man. Instead, Freeman used what he called the Jiffy tap. Oh my god. Instead of laying him down on a table and going into the spine, Freeman would instead sit a patient on a chair

backwards, have the patient lean over the back of the chair and he would insert the needle directly into the hole at the base of the back of the skull. He made it like, he made him sit like, they would come in and there was like one doctor talking about walking in the room and he's like

check this out. And just fucking like, it was like a whole procedure that they were supposed to do to make sure that the patient is safe, to make sure that the doctor could get into the spine correctly, do this kind of stuff, and he literally just popped him on a chair like Michelle Pfeiffer from Dangerous Minds and bent

the chair, bent him over the fucking the edge of the chair and went it's that easy. Yeah, and just go thunk and because there's a reservoir of spinal fluid right there at the base. A reservoir of spinal fluid. But it's literally right below one of the most important parts of the brain.

It's right below this like the brain stem. So if you fuck it up, you paralyze this person or make them unable to tie their fucking shoes forever. And it's and that is like, it's such a tiny little fuck up and he just do it fast because he was impatient. And that's the thing

is that Freeman's lack of patience when it came to treating the mentally ill. That was the hallmark of his career. That was his whole thing was like, let's get it done fast. Let's get it done. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah, they called him the Henry Ford of psychosurgery for that's for a reason. Yeah. Yeah, because at that time Freudian

psycho analysis was the standard for mental health. But talk therapy boring, oh my god it takes so long. Wow. So it seems like he might be a little lazy as well. There's a certain laziness

that goes with impatience, isn't there? He's a hustler. He's a hustler. He's not lazy. He's just a hustler and he's impatient. We're not in the burger business. We're in the real estate business. Well, Freeman's logic was that you wouldn't treat a tumor by talking it out of a person's body. Oh, that's such

good logic. Doctor, what are you doing? Yeah, so why would you treat a diseased brain by trying to talk it back to health? So, Freeman started studying the physicality of the brain. Noticing a distinct lack of discussion when it came to the brain and autopsy

textbooks, Freeman took it upon himself to rectify this oversight by writing a book of his own focusing on the dissection of the brain. Man, I watched video of him cutting a brain up into pieces and there's just something about it. I mean, like, I've

eaten brain, so I know, like, the texture of it, but that's after it's been cooked so it's looser. It was octopus brain, right? No, and I've had straight up just brain. I've had, like, I had lamb brain and it's jiggly, but it's softer because you've cooked it. But when he

fucking slices the brain with literally a bread knife, it's just a thing and he's slicing it and slices. It's weird how quickly it goes through. It's like a piece, it looks like a big old fun pile of bread. I love that you're trying to pretend like you're better than him.

You eat a lamb's brain? Yeah. We're the top of the food chain for a reason, baby. It doesn't matter. You don't have to eat the brain. Lamb's don't even think about eating our brains. They probably do. Eating brains, it feels bad. Have you ever

tried it? No, I have not eaten brains. It doesn't necessarily taste good, it just feels bad. If something cannot come in a two for one, if I cannot get a deal. Oh, you can get a deal on brains. Brains are cheap, but I will say they are, it's not my favorite texture. I don't really particularly enjoy eating brain.

I've had brain and tacos is really good, but I don't really like brain on its own. It needs something else. I like more, I like a sweet bread because it's got more gump. I remember I'll eat liver all day long. I fucking love liver. Give me some fried chicken livers, chicken gizzards, get them at the fucking

pinkies, get them at the fucking liquor store, hell yeah. We ordered sweet breads when we were in we ordered sweet breads in Oklahoma City at a place called Cattleman's. Amazing steakhouse if you get a chance, but I didn't know. I thought it was sweet bread. I thought it was bread, but then you guys did tell me

testicles. It was testicles. How good was that though? I had one and you could deep fry my own cock and it would taste good. Well, that's a great idea. Well Freeman began by removing and dissecting the brains of dead

mental patients and he concluded that while psychopathic disorders left no mark, bipolar patients had alterations depending on if they died in a manic or a depressive state. Something about the ganglia that I didn't really understand. Interesting. Freeman also

I also don't know if that's true. Yeah, but that's the thing is that all of his now after all of this, I have no clue if any of his research is good at all because it's a lot of him just poking at stuff. Yeah, we can cut this out, we can get rid of this, this is all ready to go. He was just looking at fucking

brains like Kate looked at our editor for the book, looking at fucking Marcus's writings. Right, alright. Okay, alright, so we can't take his word for it. We don't know. Of course not. We're not fucking, we're not neuroscientists. What?

Then what do I have this diploma that I drew in crayon? You made it yourself, but that's a self-made man right there. Yes, yes I am. Freeman also declared that schizophrenia was linked to a deficiency of iron in the brain. Hypothesizing that this lack of iron

was preventing the brain from properly utilizing oxygen and that was why they were schizophrenic. Not enough iron. Okay. That's not true, but what are you going to do? I don't know. So after Freeman wrote his book, which gave him a complete mental breakdown that resulted in an

imbutal addiction. Did that make you feel good? It made me feel very good. It actually did, because I also had weekly mental breakdowns while writing the book. Yes, get the net. Get the net. After that, Walter Freeman was hired at George Washington University

where he established a neurological laboratory. This guy was respected. He's moving on up. He's moving on up. Yeah, yeah. People are looking at what Freeman is doing and they're saying interesting. Tell me more. Because this technically, even

just his interest in this topic is very cutting edge. He is trying to figure out the human brain. They're all doing it, but they are just doing it from the most kind of like BF Skinner we are like human machines version of it. And no account for our personalities

or psychologies like with the difference between the mind and the brain. Yeah. This man needs olibotomy. Well, it was there at GWAU that Walter Freeman met his future partner in crime, James Winston Watts.

See, Watts was an actual neurosurgeon and he first met Freeman while Freeman was wandering the local boardwalk wearing a sombrero and twirlin' a cane. Hey, I can help you notice that you are like my indigenous hat. Don't take a picture of me

because it will ruin things in the future. Jesus, is he Hunter S. Thompson on Quayloons? What is going on with this guy? Well, as opposed to the free-spirited Freeman, Watts was a terminally serious person to the point Yeah, he's a fucking neurosurgeon.

That's what I like. You say terminally serious. That's called being a good doctor. Well, he was serious to the point of being neurotic about it. One day he left for class when he was in college. He left for class and forgot to put on his necktie.

So he grabbed a scarf and wrapped it around his neck and pretended to have a sore throat because he was so embarrassed. We used to have a thing called shame in this one. He was also one of those guys years later is like this standard

of the entire world falling down because of these t-shirts. In an airplane when people just come fucking wearing a cock sock and that's it. But there was something about Freeman's style that appealed to Watts. Freeman was sort of the yin to Watts's

yang. He needed him because he needed somebody who knew what the fuck he was doing because Freeman was an idea guy. So Watts started attending Freeman's lectures which were so entertaining some of his students started bringing

dates. During one class Freeman was speaking on the infantile behaviors of senile dementia. So in a bid for a little bit of showmanship Freeman actually brought in a senile old woman to demonstrate.

I'm so happy I brought Susan here on this date. This is going to make her wet as shit. Susan. Mind if I finger pop you right now? This right here what Henry's about to read. This is an exact reading of Freeman's perspective on his own stunt. And he's doing this in front of the person.

He's doing this. This is he is in a surgical he is like in remember that scene in young Frankenstein where they bring in the old man and he it's that. That's that. They must have taken this. They must have taken that scene straight up from this story.

So yes listen to this. I pulled from my hip pocket a nursing bottle full of warm milk and I fed it to the greedy old lady. That's a picture they'll not suit and forget. She fumbled around with it and tried to get the whole bottle in her mouth. Just as

our babies used to do. And then I gave her the bowl of my pipe to suck on and she did the same thing. I'll say she was demented. I'll say she was demented. Also why are you defaming her? How is she greedy? Because he was trying to show

how when the brain devolves it leads to this infant like infant like behavior. But then you know you grow out an old lady with dementia with the fucking old like a baby's bonnet on and like baby's fucking clothes on to make it suck on a bottle. Again, lessons were

being taught but nowadays you got a slightly different flavor. We're not seeing a lot of that now. No now it's called the notebook. We watch it and it wins an Oscar. No it was weird and cruel as Freeman could be. Watts was sort of primed to accept unorthodox

methods. Watts's mentor John Fulton had himself performed psychosurgical experiments on two chimpanzees named Becky and Lucy. See both of these chimps were trained to complete complex tasks and while Lucy completed

these tasks with ease Becky would throw a tantrum anytime she failed. And these are distinct personality traits. Yeah, you're seeing that they have personalities. They have minds. They are characters. Yeah, right. So just to see what would

happen Fulton removed the frontal lobes of the brains on both chimps in an attempt to discover what bearing that would have on their personalities and their problem-solving abilities. Okay, what happened? What happened? Yeah, interesting. How fun is that?

Would they become house representatives? Get the net! With the chimps they only had slightly more trouble solving problems. Just a little bit more. They could still solve the problems. But here's what's interesting. The personalities of the chimps they traded. Now

Becky was calm under pressure and Lucy was the angry chimp in the room when things went wrong. Now students, I'd like you to tell me what we all learned here. And the answer is absolutely nothing. But I have these two brains in my hands now isn't that fun? Here we go.

I've invented this new game. It's called Sack of Haki where one uses the bridge of one foot to slap the chimp's brain up into the sky and spread it to the juice all over all of the fellow classmates. This is so fun. Susan's going to get so fucking red.

But such experiments were nothing compared to what was about to be done by a Portuguese surgeon named Antonio Quetano de Abrufriere. You want an award? You want an award? He became a real Alex Trebek right there.

Well, luckily Antonio renamed himself Egas Moniz. Egas Moniz! I love that trauma film. See, Moniz was a respected surgeon who'd made a name for himself after World War One

in the field of understanding neurological injuries. Oh, he wasn't dabbling in dookie? No, he was actually doing good work. Except Moniz became convinced that all mental disorders could be solved by disrupting

neural circuits. Moniz figured that the best place to start would be the frontal lobes of the brain. Because at the time, nobody understood just what the fuck the frontal lobes were for. Yeah, I always kind of thought it was the titties of the brain. Yeah, I was going to say

like, maybe we should put a nipple on them. Well, these days like we know what the frontal lobes do. Today, we know they're responsible for motor function, problem solving, spontaneity, memory, language, initiation, judgment, impulse control, social behavior, and sexual behavior amongst other things.

So about all of it, huh? I really wish that they delegate. More. Because that's a lot of stuff for just one wobbly section of your brain. Yeah, it's like LA and New York up front and then it's just rural America in the back. What's the point? What's the point of the rest of the brain?

Because that's everything that you just named, Marcus. Memory. Well, I mean, the frontal lobe, that's where some people say that's where the soul lives. Like what you would call the human soul, at least when it comes to dealing with the rest of humanity, it lives in the frontal lobes. Okay. And some might say

unscientifically mind you that the frontal lobe is what connects humanity to the collective unconscious. The fucking pituitary gland, bro. All right, I'm getting my brain blown right now. I mean, it isn't a coincidence that a lot of serial killers suffered from frontal lobe injuries

as children. Completely detaches them from humanity and empathy of any kind. The frontal lobe is what makes us human. Okay. But back then, they didn't know any of this. That sucks. But then we're trying to figure it out.

So, Mona's another neurosurgeon named Almeida Lima said fuck it. Let's see what happens if we go inside and goof around with it a little bit. Got to. Sure, man. Fuck it, dude. Fuck it, here we go, man. Just fuck it.

It's like the same thing as just being like yeah, oh no, now it's cool to go to a public pool. Oh, last week it was it, but now it is. Fuck it. With their first patient, they began by injecting alcohol into the brain of a schizophrenic in order to

hydrate the nerve fibers in the frontal lobe, causing the nerves to die. Kissel's been doing that for years just with his mouth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For about 23 years now, probably going to take that easy at some point in my life. But when Mona's realized

in surgery that the alcohol might spill over to the other parts of the patient's brain, killing those as well, he realized that while he was doing the surgery. I got it, man. We got to put a bar. We got to put a little bar in the right table lobe and say

you can't drink outside of the bar. Dude, what if we fucking get a fucking poncho? Yeah. Then we could put over to the rest of that shit, dude, and what I'll do is I'll stand far away. We'll get like a kind of orbaboos. Yeah. And I'll hit it with a fucking hammer

and it'll splash on their fucking brain. All I had to do to get this degree was sift through a bunch of soldier shit. Oh, this ain't bad. Well, when he realized this little oopsy, he improvised. Aiming for the frontal lobes,

Mona's cut holes at the top of the patient's skull and picked up a tool he called the leukatome, which featured a wire loop at the end that would contract and cut when Mona's pushed a plunger at the other end. God, it gives me the

willies. Using that wire loop, Mona's cut cores of the brain tissue one centimeter in diameter out of the patient's frontal lobe in an attempt to cure the schizophrenia. And this person is awake during this time?

No. They're totally out. At this point. Okay. Well, Mona's called it a leukotomy, but it eventually came to be known as the lobotomy. All right. Well, this is the hardcore lobotomy. Yeah. Right. This is the big old first one

that if you saw some footage of some of these guys afterwards, and what it does is give you scarring that makes you sort of look like the saddest version of Hellboy that ever existed. Oh. As far as the results went, the operation did not eliminate

the patient's delusions or his hallucinations. Instead, it just made him indifferent to his delusions and hallucinations. He just didn't care anymore. So what does that... Okay. It makes him easier to deal with. Basically, that's what it pacifies.

Okay. The goal was, in their mind, if they aren't experiencing the tension of a problem, then the problem is gone. You remove the reaction to the problem. And then there's no quote-unquote problem

anymore. So the tomato is still talking to you, but you're just like, he's cool. That's a funny guy. Literally that. That is absolutely it. Now, were the patients happy with this at all? I mean, it is a mixed bag. Okay.

As far as whether people like it or not. I mean, Moniz said that out of the first 20 leucotomies he did, 35% were successes. 35% were no change. And 30% were quote-unquote

helped. Although he kind of... From what some people say, when he says helped, what he actually means is made much worse. Yes. Alright, that's a great stat if you're a baseball player. Horrible stat if you're kicking field goals.

Yeah, it is. Straight up. If a third of the brains you're fucking up with are nutty, they're not better. They're just not feeling anything. And that's good. That's the best. They just don't feel anything. And then the other 70% either die or become

catatonic baby people. I don't know. It's a problem. Now screwing around with the brain in an attempt to change behavior actually had a bit of a history at this point. Even if doctors like Egas Moniz learned the wrong lesson. That lesson should have been

don't fuck with the frontal lobes. Yes. In 1889, a patient had developed violent tendencies after a head injury had caused a piece of bone to penetrate his brain. When that piece of bone was removed, the man's homicidal tendencies vanished.

Now the lesson should have been if you fuck with the frontal lobe, it fucks with the personality. But what they took was you can fuck with the frontal lobe in order to change personality. Many years later, an Estonian surgeon named Ludwig Pusip

severed the neural links between the frontal and parietal lobes in three bipolar patients. Now it had no positive effects whatsoever. But still, Pusip did it 14 more times with quote-unquote generally good results.

That's the thing, man. I don't want it to be generally good. I want it to at least be mostly good. You also don't want my doctor to be named Bustlips. First of all, I did not laugh when you said anals. I said anals. I did not laugh, so I get this laugh.

Ludwig Pusip. What an asshole. Well, following Pusip's example, neural surgeons began removing large chunks of the brain from their patients to treat whatever physical cranial maladies might ail them

and paid no mind to changes in behavior or emotional expression. And when Walter Freeman saw what particularly egas monas was doing with frontal lobe removal, he finally saw what he believed was his chance to make his mark on the treatment

of the mentally ill, especially since Freeman's grandfather was one of the early pioneers of psychosurgery. I'm born to do this. This is what I'm supposed to do. I am born to do all sorts of slicing to anybody's brain that I want.

This is my right. He's just the Lena Dunham of surgeons. He's just getting everything off his parent's name. He is the fucking born on third base of brain surgery. He's the fucking Jonah Hill of fucking career surgery. And with his own beliefs about the physicality of mental illness,

along with actual neurosurgeon James Watts at his side, Walter Freeman now had everything he needed to implement his theories. And that, my dear friends, is where we'll pick back up for part two with the implementation

and popularization of lobotomies from the early days of drilling holes into skulls to the eventual ice pick method. All pioneered by Walter Freeman. We're going to get into the rise and fall of the lobotomy.

Next week, we're going to learn all about Walter Freeman fucking taking the lobotomy on tour. He is doing all this kind of shit. He is a fucking wild character in American history. There's something scarier about this story than even when we cover cults or serial killers

because this is sanctioned. This is all like, they're getting promoted. Like, it's so crazy that this is like top tier science. This dude was the head of neurology at George Washington University. It's so scary.

It's very scary. And then, you know, they call it a practice for an event. I don't want you to practice before you get to me. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. The lobotomy really took it out of me. This is interesting.

Can't wait for part two. Thank you all so much for the kind words about the book. Speaking of Marcus's writings. Thank you so much. Yeah, it just hit. I'm seeing a lot of our listeners out in the UK are finally getting their copies. So thank you all very much for ordering the book. And now, for those

of you out there in the UK have been waiting for it to hit you, it's available out there now. So fucking get it for you. And that is a testament to the American audience who bought enough. So they said, all right, we're taking this overseas, which was very sweet of you. I believe I also saw one in Dublin. Ah, I think we've also made it to Ireland.

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