6: Mind Games - The Dark History of Lobotomy
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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

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This is an ad by BetterHelp. What?

What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.

Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

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Hi friends, I hope you're having a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Sarian and this is the Dark History Podcast. Welcome to my Dark History Library. If you're a curious cat like myself, then come on this journey with me and let's learn something new together, shall we? So today, let me tell you about today's story because I was laying in bed.

Had my eyes closed, right? And I was thinking to myself, and I remembered in high school, I had this science teacher who proudly displayed a skull with a hole in his head, like on his desk. And I remember I asked the teacher and I was like, what is that thing on your desk? You know, whatever. And he was like, oh, it's a lobotomy skull. And I was like, well, what the hell is that? He said that it was a way that they treated depression way back in the olden days. And I really never gave it much thought after that.

Plus, I'm pretty sure that teacher ended up in prison now. So, like, honestly, that's really what I remember him for. You know, whatever. Not the skull on his desk.

So it's actually very fitting now. But during quarantine, I just had a lot of free time to think about those lost memories I've had and that skull popped into my noggin. So I decided, you know, let me look up, let me start Googling what a lobotomy is. And you know how that goes, rabbit hole. Next thing you know, 3 a.m. and I'm watching surgery on YouTube from like 1942.

Plus at first I was spelling lobotomy wrong. I was spelling it Lou-bottom-y and it was leading me to like all these weird adult sites. It was like just these weird videos about this guy named Lou and something about him being a bottom. I don't know it completely went over my head. I was like when do we get to the holes in the head? You know? So three hours and thirteen dollars later turns out nothing goes into the holes in the head other than an ice pick.

Good to know. Good to know. But then I finally weed through all the bullshit and learned that once upon a time, there was like this cure-all treatment for mental illness called lobotomy. Anywho, if you're wondering, a lobotomy is a surgery where they cut tiny pieces of your brain up until you no longer have hopes, dreams, or feelings.

I know. It all started way back in the 1900s as this experimental surgery meant to treat schizophrenia in order to make undesirables more agreeable. And I'm using air quotes if you're listening to this on the podcast. Undesirable, more agreeable. And yes, those are the actual words doctors use to describe actual mental health patients.

Back then, mental health was considered this disgusting stain on society and anyone who needed help was either shipped off or heading away with their judgmental eyes. Then there were some doctors who came up with this terrifying idea of just cutting the part of your brain that makes you feel things so you're just basically a shell of a person.

Well, surprise, surprise, it didn't work. And it just made like many patients complete zombies or made their conditions so much worse that they needed to be committed to an asylum for the rest of their lives. Yeah, why do you think American Horror Story made a whole season about a 1920s psych facility?

It was terrifying. The surgery was rarely endorsed by popular science, but instead by a couple of guys with some daddy issues who were charging an arm and a leg, I mean an arm and a brain, to have it performed. Sometimes these people were given lobotomies without their consent and would only find out about them later in life after wondering for years why the fuck they couldn't make a salad without having a full-blown meltdown.

Can you even imagine? There wasn't any other option for anxiety or depression. This was the option. Stick something in your brain or be labeled as crazy. And you did not want to be labeled as crazy in the mid 1930s. Nay, nay. Anyway, I digress. This surgery in some cases would make the patient's brain totally useless and some people would be left with no brain activity. It's honestly mind blowing.

Wait, I didn't mean like, eh, nevermind. When you look at who was actually getting these lobotomies, it was 60% women and people diagnosed as schizophrenic. I'm using air quotes again, but back then, a lot of things meant schizophrenic or like fell under the schizophrenic umbrella, okay? If you had anxiety,

depression, insomnia, suicidal delusions, melancholia, whatever the hell that is, homosexual tendencies, nervous indigestion, hysterical paralysis, and this is the most important, the chronic headache. That is what was considered schizophrenic.

It would transform wild animals into gentle creatures. So these doctors just did thousands of these experimental surgeries on women who needed therapy, animals, and gay people. Yeah, that's like all my friends. It gets way wilder. And I'll get into all the details of the who, what, when, where, why. But I think the best example of the disgusting way that lobotomies were used is the story of Rosemary Kennedy.

Oh yeah, you heard me. I said Kennedy. You know, like, Kennedy, Kennedy. Like John F., the brother of Robert. They both got assassinated. Famously so. Very dramatic. You know, those ones. Well, JFK actually had a sister. Like I said, her name was Rose Mary Kennedy. And honestly, she sounds like she was a bunch of fun when she was younger.

She loved fashion, dancing, swimming, doing blow in the bathroom and telling everyone she loved them. Okay, that last one is probably not true, but you get what I mean. She was fun. She was young. She was a woman just finding herself in her early 20s. We don't judge here. Mm-mm.

We do not judge. Her family wanted to make sure their reputation wasn't going to be tarnished. They wanted to maintain appearances of being the Kennedys. So they had to do something about it. Rosemary grew up in a life of luxury. Everyone was obviously very smart. And if you're a Kennedy, you're born into fame and high society.

So life was pretty easy, but expectations, they were very high. And for Rosemary, she was the black sheep, okay? She did not do very well in school. She was often acting out and would continue into adulthood. She was partying. She was more rebellious, unpredictable. So then her parents think it's best to put her into like this all-girls school.

So a couple of them she ends up running away from, but then she ends up at a convent school where the nuns expressed concerns that she was having sex with men. Oh yeah, drama. So Rosemary's parents, they're feeling pretty defeated and quite embarrassed by her behavior. You know, that they started looking for possible treatments to quote unquote fix Rosemary because she's a wild one and we can't have that as a Kennedy.

Her dad had been told about this new surgery, lobotomy, which could help eliminate Rosemary's mood swings and suppress some of her urges. To put it even more simply, it would make Rosemary more agreeable. With this in mind, he decided to schedule his daughter for a lobotomy in November of 1941. And now let's pause for an ad break.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.

So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.

Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.

Rosemary showed up for her surgery where they laid her down, they shaped parts of her head and they drilled one hole above each temple.

Once they did so, they took an instrument resembling a butter knife and they inserted it into the holes and they're essentially like cutting the wire that allows her brain to feel feelings. At this point, it had been practiced on dozens of patients suffering from insanity or even criminal types of behavior and it helped those people. One of the doctors asked Rosemary questions or asked her to sing songs while the other performed a lobotomy. And then...

Once Rosemary's words became jumbled, that's when they knew they had cut enough or they had gone too far. They really wouldn't know until she woke up, honestly. So hours later, when she woke up, on one hand, the procedure did exactly what was promised. Rosemary no longer had mood swings. She wasn't disagreeable and she was a lot calmer. Great, beautiful, it worked, you know?

Except it really didn't. Because on the other hand, it reduced her mental capacity to that of a two-year-old. She was no longer able to walk. She was babbling like a baby. She was shitting her pants. And she was now just completely dependent on other people. In my personal opinion, they were embarrassed of her as her fully normal self. So they get this weird ass surgery by this doctor who fully botches it and just fucks her up big time. Neato gang, you did it.

Then they shipped her off and they got rid of her. And this is literally why you probably haven't heard of her. The successes were publicized, but the failures were hidden away like sweet Rosemary Kennedy. But if Kennedy does it, then there must be something to it, right? Mental illness has been around for a very long time. And I'm sure you're very- I heard you talking. I'm looking at Moses.

He talked to a goddamn burning bush. Nobody even questioned it. It's like, yo, Mo. Hey, Mo, Mo. You good, bro? You know? Where did you even come from? I'm doing the lights. Oh. Okay. I'm in the middle of work filming. You want me to take it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Okay, so Moses, great example, talking to a burning bush. All right. And people have been trying to find ways to treat patients with whatever they've been suffering from. There has always been a curiosity of going to the brain itself to figure out what's wrong. I mean, look at today.

Today you can get pills, do meditation, yoga, breath work, fucking cupping, whatever that is. There are options for you. And it just seems like throughout history, people have searched for one answer to treat mental illnesses. Lobotomy was just 1936 attempt to address mental health. I mean, they tried, okay? So you see back then in the 1930s, if you had a mental illness, they would just lock you up in an asylum and you just sit there for the rest of your life.

So someone had to come up with a solution to help with these overcrowded hospitals. Enter James Watts and Walter Freeman. They had been studying a new type of surgery that a doctor named Moniz in Portugal was working on. Ultimately, James and Walter would go on to popularize lobotomy in the United States. But first, let me give you a little background about Moniz, who kind of got the ball rolling.

Around 1935, Moniz, a neurologist, was at a medical conference and he heard a talk by a doctor who removed the frontal lobes of two violent chimpanzees. Now, before the lobes were removed, the chimps would attack each other pretty viciously. But after the behavior of the chimps, it changed so much that someone else at the conference described it as if they had joined a happiness cult. That's what they said.

They were super zen, picking bugs off of each other's hair, just chilling, chimping out, just chimping it up, big chimping. So Moniz is like, "Hey, why aren't we doing this on people?" By the way, that's like an absolutely insane jump, but that's what he was thinking. And three months later, he did just that.

And Moniz wrote about how successful his treatment was, even though he rarely kept any records on the patients. But he promoted it as like this answer to life's unhappiness. Now enter to the scene Walter Freeman, who was working at a local mental hospital in Washington, D.C. And Walter, he came from a family of overachievers. His dad and grandpa were super successful doctors. Not just a regular white coat, Walter's grandpa was a fortune teller.

full-on performer hunty okay it seemed like his dad was not much of a performer and Walter kind of resented his dad's apathy toward the showmanship of his grandpa he really idolized his grandpa and Walter was eager to live up to the legacy and on top of that he saw his colleagues and friends making names for themselves and he was eager to do that for himself too social pressures you get it

While he was working at the hospital, he had this weird feeling of fear, disgust, and shame because of how poorly treated the patients were, and he wanted to help find an easier solution to all of this. Now that's when he came across what Moniz was doing, and he sees an opportunity to do two things. One, help people, and two, have the world roll out the red carpet to him as the healer of all mental illnesses. I have arrived.

Now, he knew if he could perfect Moniz's technique and get everyone to do it, there'd be less suffering, right? I mean, that's a great thing. But Walter wasn't a surgeon, and he couldn't perform the surgery himself, so he called up his friend neurosurgeon James Watts, and he's like, hey, do you, like, want to work on this little project with me? You know, we can save mankind, change the world. Sounds great. So James and Walter, they worked together and modified the Moniz technique.

They added a dull flat knife, drilled into the side of the skull instead of the top, and renamed it as what we know today as the lobotomy. Rebrand! And in September of 1936, they lobotomized their first patient. Now, I regret to inform you, friends, it was a big success. You can imagine, really boosted Walter's ego. And an egotistical lobotomist is not...

A good thing, I can imagine. Now, 63-year-old Alice Hammett was dealing with insomnia, anxiety, and overwhelming depression for most of her entire life, and she went looking for some help.

Walter had diagnosed Alice with agitated depression a while before this. Now she was getting worse and worse, violent mood swings. She was randomly laughing or crying and she was unable to sleep and she struggled with massive self-doubt. Just a normal Tuesday in my book. Normally a patient at this time would be tossed into a mental hospital and the key would just be thrown away, you know? But Walter was able to present a choice.

She can go to the mental hospital or the laboratory.

Now, Walter, he was a great salesman. And he was able to present it as like the one-all be-all solution to her struggles. So of course to Alice, a one and done surgery or stay in a hospital forever, naturally she's gonna choose the one and done. Sign me up doc, I'll take one lobotomy. So Walter and James, they put her under anesthesia and just like with Rosemary Kennedy, they have to shave Alice's head.

Then they drill two holes above her temples and they carefully cut nerve fibers connecting to her frontal lobe. Now Walter begins his neurological examination. Her pupils were responsive. He stroked the soles of her feet and her toes curled in response. She seems fine, great. And then four hours later, the anesthesia wore off and she woke up and she focused on Walter.

and he asked her like how are you feeling and she's like oh my god i feel so much better wow later that night she was still able to name her husband i know groundbreaking describe his line of work recite her address and correctly identify objects in the room way to go alice you go girl he went to her bedside the next day and found her alert sitting up she's there great

Now, Walter wanted to know what her emotional state was like and asked her if she still felt her old fears. And she's like, oh my God, no, I do not. I feel so happy. He's like, do you feel happy or sad? And she's like, I'm so happy.

Over the next few days, he monitored Alice and watched her become more alert, more active. She was just doing the most. She would read magazines and talk about what she just read. She had a good appetite, good sleep, and more importantly, very little anxiety. She didn't even care about the parts of her head Walter had to shave for James to do the surgery.

which was something that she said filled her with intense anxiety before the procedure. This was the first attempt to treat mental illness through surgery on the frontal lobes of the brain in American medical history. And to Walter and James, the result was exactly what they wanted to see.

It wasn't perfect, I mean there was some slurring happening in Alice's words as her brain healed, but Alice went on to live a somewhat normal, anxiety-free life. And Alice would become Walter and James' poster child for the simple effectiveness of lobotomy, soon described by the New York Times as the surgery of the soul. I mean, don't you want to live an anxiety-free life, just like Alice? Well, before we figure that out...

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. Rakuten is the smartest way to save money when you shop because members get cash back at over 3,500 stores across every category, including fashion, beauty, electronics, home essentials, travel, dining, and more.

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Anyway, it's at this point Walter is starting to get like a taste of rock star status. They set their goal to operate on 20 patients by the end of the year because in order to commercialize the lobotomy, they had to prove its success. They were invited to perform more operations, so Walter began touring the country.

So Walter was channeling his grandfather's showmanship, and instead of giving some kind of boring medical jargon-filled speech, he turned it into like this weird spectacle. He wanted to perform lobotomies in front of a huge audience in hopes of receiving a huge applause. He would wear like a wide-brimmed hat, his facial hair shaped into like a sharp goatee, and he would carry around a cane, which many believed like he didn't even need, but okay. Okay.

He was like the Willy Wonka of brain surgery. Oh, he was like one of those 1930s carnival barkers, you know? Are you feeling sad? You got a case of ants in your pants? Are you terrified of getting older? Well, step right up. We got a one-time fix to solve all your problems. What's that? You don't love your husband? Well, we can fix that too.

You see right here it says hosted by Bailey Sarian. There's no commentary or anything. How about you take your brown apple and just get out of here and get back to the lights. The lights need assistance. You're doing great. I don't know why he's here.

Meanwhile, James was able to stay focused on the medical implications and the larger impact on the medical industry at the time. He was a straight-laced dude. He had like a baby face with a serious demeanor. And if Walter was the showman and the face of the procedure, then James was just the dude who wanted to get to work.

When he first met Walter, Walter was wearing a sombrero, getting ready to lecture about brain stuff. For me, that's a big red flag, like he's obviously full of shit, but James liked the flair and what he had to say.

So he decided to venture away from his usual basic doctor MO and risk it all just to be part of whatever Walter was selling. They would invite the press to report on the procedure, reaching a much larger audience countrywide, which was a really smart business move, to be honest. This would lead to New York Times announcing to the American people this brand new surgical procedure, the lobotomy, the surgery of the soul.

Tell me more. Who qualifies for the surgery of the soul, you say?

Well, Bailey, I'm so glad you asked. You would qualify if you struggled from depression, self-doubt, anxiety, schizophrenia, fear of aging, unrest due to a loveless marriage. Then you, my friend, could get a lobotomy. Doesn't that actually sound kind of good? Can you see why people would be into this? I'm into this. I mean, shit, I don't want to age. I'm terrified of aging. Sure.

Well, when looking into this list a bit further, who do you think is going to relate to these symptoms? Quote, unquote, symptoms. Because I'm sure men in the 1930s did not suffer from fear of aging. It's women.

Women is what I'm getting at. Women made up most of his customers, but that's how Walter sold his surgery to a lot of people as an easy solution to all of their problems. Over the next few years, they'd go on to collect over 200 patients to perform the lobotomy on in order to help them build their case study, which they released as a book called Psychosurgery. Then the American Medical Association launched

published an editorial saying lobotomy was a great option for the American people. You'd have to be brain dead or a man to not want a lobotomy. All of their dreams were coming true. Everyone knew their names, but mainly Walter. And he was stoked to finally have the recognition he always wanted. Okay, but hold the scalpel. Let's talk about how things were actually going. Now they had some pretty big claims and the numbers, they didn't lie.

In the book of Psychosurgery, which became a bestseller, Walter and James went into great detail about their findings that out of 200 patients, 63% improved, 23% not much happened, and 14% they got worse or freaking died. 14% sounds like a huge risk, right?

Well, not to the people. They were focusing on that 63% number. And for the ladies out there, if you're struggling to keep up, that's over half. Where do you keep getting all this food from? Crafty. Good to know. Anyways, moving on. Thank you, Joey, for your constant commentary that nobody asked for. Walter wasn't satisfied with having only performed 200 lobotomies. He wanted more. And in order to get more, he needed two things to happen.

make more people believe they needed a lobotomy, and make the procedure simpler and faster. So first, qualifying more people. Now Walter believed lobotomy could also be an effective treatment for headaches, which it wasn't. It was kind of like how the tobacco industry started with the Marlboro Man because it made adults buy more cigarettes, but then they were like, hey,

Let's expand our customer base. What if cartoons started ripping heaters or whatever kids call it these days? Then bam, kids want to smoke.

And they did. The point here is that Walter is widening his demographic and targeting a larger audience. The next step would be to simplify the procedure, something nobody asked of brain surgery. And Walter, who again was not a surgeon, was astonished by the work of an Italian colleague who developed an approach to the procedure that needed nothing more than a tool resembling an ice pick that could be tapped through the eye socket into the brain.

No holes in the head, no cutting. Now this made the process so simple that Walter, who did I mention was not a surgeon, hi, began performing lobotomies all by himself without James or the required sterilization of a medical room. Now you can see how this is gonna be problematic. Walter's new method was so easy, it took only seven minutes to perform.

sex joke. And in comparison, the old method took a bunch of hours. Not only was Walter cutting corners in the operating room, he once said, quote, all that germ crap, end quote, was slowing him down and thought being sterile was annoying. I freaking roll.

but he got what he wanted. The surgery was now fast and in 1946, he began doing this without James. It started with operating on a woman who was manic, suicidal, and prone to uncontrollably screaming for seemingly no reason.

After the surgery was performed by Walter, all of a sudden she could speak, she could read, write, walk, and she was no longer prone to violent outbursts. She even became a nurse. Isn't that sweet?

I think it's this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep. While you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.

So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.

Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.

He hasn't even told James yet about this ice pick business. He went ahead and performed nine more surgeries without James even knowing. So Walter eventually goes to James and is like, hey buddy, I've been experimenting a little. I can't wait to show you the things I've been working on. You're gonna love it, man. And he goes on to show him the new and improved ice pick procedure. And we don't know exactly how that conversation went, but what we do know was that James was

James was almost offended by this new procedure. It was gross. It was dirty. It was a slap in the face to modern day medicine. And just like that, their 13 year friendship was heading down the drain. With James out of the picture, Walter was able to cut the dead weight that was holding him back from achieving his bigger goal.

lobotomies for everyone in just seven simple minutes for the new low price of $199.99 call now in 1948 Moniz remember him from earlier in the story well he won the Nobel Prize in medicine for inventing the lobotomy this gave the procedure credibility on a global scale and now everybody's just dying to get one it's super chic it's

It's on trend. Suddenly, thousands of lobotomies were being performed all over the world from Europe to Japan. Now, Walter, being the businessman he was, he prepared for this new onslaught of customers. With his new, cheaper, and faster procedure, he performed 228 lobotomies in just two weeks.

His average price was about $200, sometimes $20, sometimes free depending on where he was at,

Between the 1930s and the 1970s, 40 to 50,000 lobotomies were performed in America with Walters customers taking up roughly 10% of that number. Most of the lobotomies done were on disenfranchised, powerless people, older adults, the mentally ill, women, now even children. If you Google lobotomy, there's a good chance this name is going to come up, Howard Doley.

Oh, he's the most famous survivor of the procedure. And he had it done to him when he was just 12 years old. But plot twist, Howard didn't find out he got a lobotomy until he was an adult. He had like some kind of sneaky suspicion something happened to him, saying that he felt something was missing from his soul.

Surgery of the soul, huh? Howard got a lobotomy from none other than Mr. Walter Freeman. I can't get over the fact that this guy had a full-blown lobotomy and didn't even know it. So you're probably wondering, well, how does a 12-year-old end up on the operating table in the first place? Well, when Howard Doley was four, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which in turn qualified him for the lobotomy.

Howard was one of the lucky ones and eventually went on to live a somewhat normal life. I sort of glossed over it when we talked about it earlier, but homosexual tendencies were considered a symptom of schizophrenia back then. So there have been people who say gay people got lobotomies as treatment for being gay, but there isn't any evidence we could find to prove this was something Walter or anybody else actively targeted.

But at this time, engaging in gay sexual relations was considered a crime. So an easy way to stop committing crimes is just to, I guess, remove that part of your brain, right?

In general, if you weren't good enough for society, they'd give you a lobotomy. And that went for black people and women too, who experienced lobotomies at a higher rate than white men. So if you weren't a white dude, you qualify for a lobotomy. Even chimps weren't safe. Walter never explicitly said that he would target gay people, but here's an example of how he used lobotomies to treat homosexual tendencies. There was this woman named Gretchen.

Now Gretchen was married and her husband noticed that she never wanted to have sex. So naturally he thought she was cheating on him because you know, typical, right? Plus he knows that she was super paranoid and would go into really weird graphic description of her sexual fantasies with women. I don't know, I think it sounds kind of hot to me. Well, one day Gretchen hopped into her car and she drove off into the night leading her right into a telephone pole.

Because of her random shift in mood, her near-death experience, and the fact that she looked to meet Taco, she got her husband's permission to get a lobotomy.

Notice how I said husband's permission? Well, that's how you had to get shit done around this time. So in June of 1950, Gretchen met with Walter and received her treatment. Afterwards, everything seemed fine at first, but then she started having these psychotic episodes where she saw crosses in the sky, she lost all of her artistic interests, and even her sense for adventure.

Gretchen became dependent on full-time care, spending the rest of her life living with her mother.

Unlike Rosemary or Howard or Alice, Gretchen's story is likely the most common story surrounding lobotomy. You were sold this as an easy fix, but the effects were lasting and worse than anybody could have imagined. It literally destroyed lives. And just like in the previous dark history stories we've talked about, there's this common theme of the same groups being marginalized, victimized, criminalized, and exploited. And they swear.

They always swear it has nothing to do with race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Funny how they haven't found a treatment for being a white man in America. Speaking of Walter Freeman, things started to change for him and the public perception around lobotomies in the late 1940s. The American Medical Association would come out with a piece criticizing lobotomy by pointing out the obvious, that it was an incredibly dumb idea to destroy the brain and assume it would make someone a healthier person. Now we're going to take a little...

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Lobotomy was on the decline and was becoming a thing of the past. Many people were looking for a safer and less dangerous method to treat their mental illness. So much so that even Russia banned lobotomy in the 50s. Russia.

They have bears as pets out there. I mean that's what I heard. Anyways, rumors were spreading in the US saying that Russians were using lobotomy as a way to use mind control on the US soldiers. These rumors were making people really afraid of this treatment because it was now being linked to mind control. Now we have no direct proof of this but at the time it was believed to be true. It wasn't looking good for Walter.

And then in the 1950s, a huge drug revolution in medicine came to be. Introduced to the public was an easier solution for mental health treatment. Pills for everybody. If you want to treat depression, there's a pill for that. If you want to treat schizophrenia, there's a pill for that. You want to take some birth control? Wink, wink. There's a pill for that.

Walter, he's getting nervous because he knows the average American will gladly take a pill over getting an ice pick shoved into their brain. But he was in denial and he wanted to keep the lobotomy show going. He still continued to tour around the United States believing that lobotomy was still a good and honest treatment.

He was holding onto that dream of being a successful doctor that pioneered mental health treatment. But just let it go, Walter. The people have moved on. God damn. You know when you see a guy who has like four hairs on the top of his head and he still like puts gel in it and you thinking to yourself like, dang, David, just let it go. Shave your head. My God.

That was Walter. He just wouldn't let it go, and he was holding on to the past and who he used to be for hairs and all. But he made the decision to keep trucking on and performing lobotomies where he could. Yeah, you heard me right. Walter is still going for it. The biggest sign that he and lobotomy had fallen far and fast was in 1961.

Walter was giving a speech about the benefits of lobotomy and people were heckling him from offstage. You know, they're calling him a monster, wondering why he's even still performing lobotomies in the first place. So Walter was getting all butthurt over the heckling and he marches offstage and he grabs a box filled with over 500 Christmas cards that his former patients had sent him. And then he takes it and he dumps it out onto the stage and he yells at the hecklers like

"How many Christmas cards do you get from your patients?" As if this proved some point to the audience. The interesting part of that story is that he showed his true colors right there. It goes back to his family and his peers. He enjoyed being the star of the show and he needed constant validation that he was doing a good job. Even when it was obvious the work he was doing was damaging, he was in complete denial about the fact that this was a completely self-serving venture.

The final nail in Walter's coffin, 1967. Walter's final lobotomy patient died as a result of the surgery, leaving Walter to throw in the towel for good this time and giving up his career.

By this time, Walter himself had performed about 3,500 lobotomies. Who freaking knows how many lives and families were truly affected by both of their work. And at this point, Walter was, he was just a sad clown. He lost everything. He lost his job. He lost his fandom. He lost his best friend. And the cherry on top of this new low? Walter got cancer. Yeah. Yeah.

Sorry, bud. Talk about a bad day. You know what would make Walter feel so much better? Checking in on his old patients and seeing what successful, happy lives they were now living, all thanks to Walter's magic. So cue the apology tour. Well, maybe we should call it the validation tour because, once again, our man thrives on validation.

So he hops in his car, he drives around the country and visits a bunch of his success stories. He needs to feel better and everyone hates lobotomy except for the people it worked for. They then tell him how much better they are. He isn't doing well, he's dying of cancer, everything sucks. So he needs confirmation this all wasn't for nothing.

Around this time, he released his final lobotomy report. Out of 707 schizophrenics, around 73% were still hospitalized or at home or dependent on others.

But he was determined to find that healthy 27% because he got their Christmas cards. Walter would spend his last days on earth solely dying of cancer and driving around the country visiting his former patients. Maybe it was fame, maybe it was his ego, but Walter refused to admit lobotomy wasn't a good thing until his dying day in 1972.

His legacy or just the legacy of lobotomy, it's super complicated. There were variations of the procedure, better and safer ones, still being performed up until at least the 90s, but lobotomy as it was known in Walter Freeman's era isn't really used anymore. And I mean, technically any brain surgery that is intended to treat behavioral problems could be considered a form of lobotomy, but it's not exactly the same thing.

So the science has evolved and luckily you can just pop a pill now instead of getting your skull cracked open. But I mean, come on, same shit, different day. Lobotomy mostly lives on now as something in movies and TV shows portrayed exclusively as a means of controlling somebody. I'm sure there's some examples you can think of and they're all likely works of fiction. But what isn't fiction are the lives that were shattered and permanently altered by James, Walter and their ice pick. Well,

Wasn't this fun? What did we learn here, friends, besides Joey annoying us? Well, I hope you learned something about how easy it can be to ruin your life in America. Walter would ruin thousands of people's brains, sometimes for the low, low price of just $20. I mean, I can ruin your life for way less if you're looking for a cheaper alternative.

I think this story isn't just about doctors who are completely unhinged. It's more about the lengths we as a society will go just to please our peers to fit in. Just be normal, quote unquote, or whatever the hell that means. Not only that, but Walter got away with it. Nobody ever checked him on it or even made him wash his hands, his greasy ass mitts.

Anyways, always read the fine print. You should obviously trust your doctors, right? But you should always be careful with whether the doctor should even be doing whatever he's doing. Walter wasn't even a freaking surgeon and he was performing surgery. Like, would you trust your dentist with your knee surgery? Or would you trust, like, Dr. Dre with brain surgery?

I don't know, those beats are pretty catchy. I want to hear your thoughts. Do you know more about this? Let's continue the conversation over on social media using the hashtag darkhistory. Join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs and also catch Murder Mystery Makeup which drops every Monday. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. You make good choices and I'll be talking to you guys later. Bye.

Dark History is an Audioboom original. This podcast is executive produced by Bailey Sarian, Chelsea Durkin from Slash Management, and Avi Gandhi from Wheelhouse DNA, producer Lexi Kiven, Daryl Christon, and Spencer Strassmore. Research provided by Jed Bookout, writers Jed Bookout, Michael Oberst, Joey Scavuzzo, and me, Bailey Sarian. And I'm your host...

Princess of the Dark, Bailey Sarian. A special thank you to today's historical consultants, Jack L. High, author of The Lobotomist, and Professor Janelle Johnson. What you're hearing is hardy fiber cement siding living up to its reputation as the siding that handles hail impact with ease.

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