Walter Freeman | Morbid | Podcast | Forensic Files

hey weirdos I'm Ash and I'm Elena and this is morbid [Music] move it in the morning it's morbid in
the morning and I apologize I'm sick so you [ __ ] I might sneeze all over you or
cough all over you that's nasty but yeah that can be taken out in the post editing process it can just know that I
sneezed and coughed all over you we took it out but yeah so I'm trying to I'm trying to muster up my strength my
strength and energy right now because this is a pretty wild case that we're gonna be
talking about it's not like it's like it's not one case it's a it's a man's career is what I should say okay uh
we're gonna be covering Walter Jackson Freeman oh Father of the trans orbital lobotomy that little thing that guy that
that little lobot about yeah he's uh he's he's something a monster he is something we're gonna do this in two
parts because I do want to talk about the Rosemary Kennedy lobotomy that uh is so tragic that is a I mean reading about
Jack rocked my world I remember I actually didn't know about that until maybe I would say like five or six years ago
when there was like some Kennedy special on the History Channel I never knew that
and when they started going into it I was like oh my god oh it's horrific because they did to that woman it's her
exactly and then to think that that really wasn't that long ago no it really wasn't in the grand scheme of things
that's no nuts and that our own it was her own father who really really [ __ ] her over there uh but I mean her it was
both her parents but we'll get into that in part two I want to start part two with that and like
give it it's due yeah because it's it's a quite a story and it's a timing the story and it needs its own kind of
moment there definitely but we are going to begin by talking about Dr Freeman himself explaining where he came from
how he even came into this like what his intentions at first were okay all that fun because it seems like they got lost
down the road they certainly did yeah I don't know a lot about his origin story yes I'm excited to hear when you hear
about him in the beginning it feels like and you're just kind of hopeful that it's true that he had these like Grand
and somewhat pure intentions at one point I think they were lost in this thing where he believed in a time where
they believed like chalk therapy was the only way to get through mental illness he believed that it was physical like
Medical intervention that was the only way to get both were were wrong and both were
right yeah because both of them were standing both sides were sitting there standing in the this is the only way
right and it's not it's a mixture of both yeah as we know now and we still haven't perfected it it's it's very much
a mixture of both but each of them were saying no no no my way is the only way so his intentions in the beginning were
he he wanted to cure mental illness okay but my goodness did he go about it the wrong way yeah and he just kept going
even through his failures which his failures weren't like failing at you know you know creating
something entertaining or something and just keep working at it until you do it right you're failing at human beings
like you're ruining human beings lives with your failures so it's like you can't keep doing this but he kept yeah
doing it at the expense of so many people that's the thing he's just like on to the next one and now okay on to
the next one and that's when he goes into evil villain territory it's like you you start with these intentions but
my goodness did they get lost along the way so when Portuguese neurologist igus Moniz
developed the lobotomy because a lot of people confuse that Dr Freeman was the one who created the lobotomy he didn't
okay he created the trans orbital lobotomy which is a totally different procedure egus Moniz was the one who
created the lobotomy they also called it a leukotomy okay but we know it now is a
lobotomy it was in 1935 and it was just a super crude surgery that was developed
as a blanket treatment for mental illness it involved drilling into the skull and like literally just scrambling
the neural connections to the frontal lobe yeah and they just thought like yeah that'll fix it just yeah just egg beat
that person's brain and that'll do and the thing is all of these ideas have a basis in like reality and you're like
you if you just followed that in a logical and more like normal way you could have got somewhere
I think but you followed it down this wild path of just let's scramble the connections it's like you didn't think
of anything more refined here because that's the thing when you think about it you're like yeah scrambling them yeah
like like I don't know about that I don't think that's gonna do much so less than a decade later after igis Monet has
created the lobotomy American neurologist Walter Jackson Freeman refined question mark the procedure to
to develop a non-surgical procedure because that was obviously a very surgical procedure
um this one could be performed in a doctor's office that's terrifying and this is what he called the trans orbital
lobotomy and how is that not surgical well Freeman's procedure involved inserting a medical instrument very
similar to an ice pick into the patient's orbital socket to eyeball sever like right next to the
eyeball it would go in okay and it would be used to sever the neural connections
without requiring surgery hospital stays or long recovery times it was advertised as quick easy and a
painless solution to everything painless yes this thing into your eye they were like
oh don't worry we'll numb you up it's fine what and if you look at Patients like
afterwards they like their eyes are all black obviously of course it's so intense that's awful and he said he
could cure it could cure General lethargy occasional depression schizophrenia violent aggressive
behavior everything on the Spectrum and they basically made the procedure a go-to solution for very complex
psychological issues that have affected countless people for countless centuries
they were like oh we figured it out and unfortunately while the procedure was slightly effective for a very small
number of those who received a lobotomy it was used indiscriminately often without consideration for the
increasingly disastrous outcomes that were happening they were just like well this one will be fine you know what
forget that one we're going to move on to the next and this will be better sometimes patients were as young as four
or five years old are you kidding yes oh my God whose parents I'm like yeah so the question becomes was Dr
Freeman an indiscriminate egomaniac or was he just blinded to what he had really done and was looking to be the
person to fix it all I don't know I think it's a good a good mix of both I think he is evil villain territory for
sure and I think it began as something different and it turned into something [ __ ] awful I feel like I mean that
kind of happens with a lot of villains it's true he and it it's it's unforgivable the way he just kept going
that's the problem here what is realized like this is not working where he just kept going he kept hiding results he was
just moving forward like it wasn't this awful thing so let's talk about who Walter Freeman
is who is he Walter Freeman Walter Jackson Freeman Jr was born on November 14 1895 in Philadelphia I think that
makes him a Scorpio so there you go so he was the first of seven children born to Walter Freeman senior and Corinne
Keane Freeman Walters maternal grandfather was Williams was William Keane who was a veteran of the Union
Army who served in the American Civil War war and was the country's first brain surgeon oh [ __ ] so he came from
Sabrina people around Walter's earliest years he was sick a lot like practically
from the moment he was born oh wow uh when the boy was only 14 months old William Keane his grandfather
was called on by his parents to quote excise 30 enlarged lymph nodes from one side of the baby's neck
yeah which this procedure ended up causing permanent paralysis of the trapezius and
sternomastoid muscles oh yeah so they just took his lymph nodes out on that side yeah
okay yeah enlarged lymph nodes yeah yeah now in the years after that Walter was dealing with a wide array of common and
also uncommon illnesses at the time uh he got diphtheria measles scarlet fever mumps he had repeated bounce bouts of
tonsillitis and eventually needed a tonsillectomy gee so he was sick a lot it sounds like he had some kind of like
autoimmune disease it sounded like there was definitely something more wrong but
in the late 19th century Philadelphia was a hub for Progressive ideas in science and medicine and a lot of
influential people in those fields lived there so Walter grew up surrounded by doctors and surgeons who encouraged him
like very much encouraged his inquisitive nature because he immediately was like he was rounded all
the time his grandfather who he really liked was a brain surgeon so he was like what's this all about and he ended up
earning the nickname Little Walter YY Little Walter why why that's adorable because he was always asking why why
does this work he was the original why yeah he really was he was the one who started it uh but I mean it was all
basically just ensuring that he was going to go right into medicine like his father and his grandfather
now as a student Walter was Stellar he was super into academics he was great at it but he was less interested in and
less um in tune with was things that little boys his age were quote unquote supposed to be interested in okay like
sports and girls which I find like just I'm like that they it's always presented as like oh to that that's his
weirdness and it's like this is supposed to be interested in part it should be really italicized here because it's like
I a kid doesn't need to be into sports and girls to be a normal kid no it's not like let's not do that
but of course this made him a little bit of an outsider at school especially where the time period the time period
for sure and at home it was kind of a mixed platter for him because according to writer Jack elhi Walter contentedly
assumed the Victorian role of the distant but dominant oldest brother so he was distant with his siblings he
acted like the boss and he was also pretty distant with his own father his father was not like a lovey-dovey type
okay Walter remembered him as quote shy socially awkward and a humorless father who's a example taught his son to regard
emotional expression as something strange and frightening I feel like that was pretty typical of the time
unfortunately um while Walter's father seemed very uncomfortable in his role as like
caregiver like he just didn't seem to be able to function in that not a warm fuzzy Corinne Keane Freeman the mom took
the complete opposite approach and made a very consistent effort to involve herself and her children's lives be
there emotionally she was pretty much shut out of her husband's life because he was working all the time and she so
she was kind of also on the receiving end of just being neglected so she knew what it felt like but she reveled in
motherhood like reveled in it she went to all her children's events and activities around the city she was there
she would bring them places she was always with them she would arrange little vacations with them she would
bring them to like nearby Resorts and places like Jamestown Gloucester Cape May all kinds of places just them she
sounds rad and yeah and it's like so un unlike their relationship which was pretty tense and strained with their
father their mother was kind of their like their Refuge yeah like she became their like Oasis where they could talk
about their emotions very freely with her she didn't make them sound strange like she would listen
um at least they had that yeah exactly and but of all her children Walter was still the hardest to reach according to
her like he was very aloof distant very much took after the father okay um and actually Corinne described her uh
Walter as the cat that walks by himself oh that's what she that was one of his nicknames what a sweet way to describe
it though she's like he's just silly likes his alone time uh and if there was any figure that loomed very large over
young Walter's life it was his grandfather William Keane the first brain surgeon unlike his father who
again very much like struggled to relate to others which I'm like I think he probably had some stuff going on of
himself by the sounds of it yeah because it sounds like he has some like issues like socially and also just like
emotionally like I don't even because I don't find I didn't find anything um about him being like aggressive and
violent or anything like that he was just like awkward it didn't just how to deal with that okay
um so I'm like I think you needed a little bit of like you know help dealing with that as well right uh but yeah he
he did not and also his father didn't like attention so he did his work he was also a doctor
but he did not like attention from the public I didn't want him to do his work and he wanted to get through it and he
was very uncomfortable with being showered with any kind of attention and that's funny because it seems like his
son didn't end up the same way well because Walter's grandfather William Keane reveled in accolades and attention
uh because he he had a pristine very Stellar reputation in science like you said the first brain surgeon and he was
he was great so it's like he loved it so it was totally opposite and Walter definitely was drawn more to that side
and by the time Walter was like an early early in his teens Keane's work in neurology had actually earned him a
level of Fame that many scientists never see uh he was a role model to Walter like his intellectual
prowess her his social like his ability to be like socially aware and especially
comfortable because Walter was still very socially awkward at this point he was taking after his father yeah but he
was looking up to his grandfather and in time Walter became his grandfather's favorite grandchild really because I
think he saw that he was going to follow after him but he also saw him as somebody as like I need to kind of show
him the ropes kind of thing um and they spent a lot of time together during Walter's formative years as an
adolescent now in 1912 Walter enrolled in his freshman year at Yale University oh [ __ ]
yeah Rory Gilmore uh there you go and unfortunately he found that he was like a little ill-prepared for the amount of
work and the rigor that was expected of students Rory felt the same exactly he was Rory Gilmore exactly
um and he actually recalled later in Prep School a daily stint of 30 lines of Greek translation was standard in
college it was 30 pages I'm real ill prepared for the prep school part of that for real prepared
for like the prep for the prep school yeah now he said the jump from geometry and algebra to calculus was equally
baffling and I also agree with that [ __ ] calculus yeah I never had to do calculus
but my friends did and I was like yeah no that's not true that's a lot uh but Walter struggled considerably during his
first year and he barely passed his classes but he also was matriculating at 16 years
old which was an achievement in and of itself so yeah so we have to give him that but at 16 the rigor was a little
too hard it's like yeah we can understand that checks um yeah and you know it also he's
immature at this point yeah 16 year old boy is not ready for college yeah uh but
Walter's immaturity and social awkwardness ultimately led to a college experience that he later described as
very lonely intimidating and not a good time at all that's pretty miserable uh during his sophomore and Junior years at
Yale Walter continued to struggle in all aspects socially academically he tried and repeatedly failed to set her settle
on a major that he could at least enjoy doing like he just wasn't finding his place because again he's 16. that's hard
and it was right at the beginning of his senior year that Walter actually contracted typhoid and was hospitalized
for period and that's when he began to talk about going into the medical fields despite his father's insistence that he
avoid medicine really because his father was like it is a very demanding intense
career right uh Walter kept coming back to the idea of being a doctor and he saw
it as he was like I think this is a good career you get a good life out of it definitely it sets you up if you're good
at it and he did have a big interest in poetry as well but he was looking at it as this is much more of a viable career
than poetry especially for the time yeah exactly now as Jack L high notes typhoid
had stolen half of Freeman's senior year but in return it had given him an opportunity to ponder his future
following his graduation from Yale in 1916 he enrolled at the University of Chicago and began to study medicine
so unlike his time at Yale during you know where he was really struggling to find his place and his passions it's
almost like when you have to do like your prerequisites yeah it's like that Yale was his prerequisite where the
prerequisite yeah uh Walter acclimated very quickly to medical school he found that he loved it he had a real big
aptitude for formulas he loved laboratory work he just drives yeah now after two semesters at the University of
Chicago he transferred to the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia
and many of his fellow students struggled in their first year but he was like impressing all his instructors he
was super committed to the hard work it's in his blood yeah he was very interested in it very good at it they
were very impressed by him and the summer after his first year at the University of Pennsylvania he returned
to Chicago for summer studies and that's when he started his fascination with the
human brain particularly he became very interested in the intersection between medicine and Psychiatry okay he was very
interested in that part and it is by his third year in medical school his studies
had come to occupy literally all his time he was becoming his father fully committed and uh he said medicine held
my interest to the point where I excluded many other things he later said that's not in fact I was barely aware of
my family do not recall what they were doing or where they were during this period that's really sad when you break
that down and so he was very engrossed in his studies but he also just really wanted to start his career he was like I
loved studying but I was just ready to take the step out of the nest he really didn't like doing internships like he
kind of resented it and thought he was above it a little bit I could see that especially where his grandfather is who
he is he's like do you know who I yeah he's like I don't need an internship he referred to it as Scott work and he's
the unglamorous day-to-day work of collecting samples and filling out paperwork was just not something he
wanted to do listen we all got to start as an apprentice okay we all do even in a hair salon you got to do it there you
go now during this period Freeman was developing certain uh characteristic traits
that we're a kind of undesirable but would end up being pretty pretty relevant or prominent I should say
during his entire professional life yeah your face told me they weren't going to
be great yeah so El hi wrote Freeman eventually realized that as an intern he was supposed to be a member of a
hospital team and the role of team player was never one that Freeman filled well hmm uh so despite studying under
some of the literally most highly regarded surgeons in the field he's like I'm better he would rather work by
himself in the lab or just standing at an operating table for hours wow just focusing on something which I can't
it's an undesirable trait for sure to not be a team player but I understand that some people just it's hard for some
people yeah it just is I'm not a great team player like I'm just not and I it is an under desirable treat and one but
it's one that you should work on well that's the thing because I was gonna say like I I know that about you that like
it's not your favorite thing to do but when it comes down to it I've seen you be able to do it exactly so and you have
to be able to because life is a collaborative effort that's the thing and a lot of times like you don't need
to change yourself no like I never believe in like changing those kind of Parts about yourself like you don't need
to just become a different person no because like I I won't so that's just the way it is you know like if you're
not very excited about team building things like that you're that's not gonna change but like you said you just have
to like you have to just go with it and you're gonna see I think sometimes it helps to see when something pans out
from a team effort definitely look at it you go okay you know what I couldn't have done that by myself once that
needed everybody's hands in it that's the thing like different viewpoints Make the World Go Round you know it's like
sometimes it is better to do things by yourself and sometimes people are allowed to do that yeah of course like
sometimes you're gonna be like really focused and you'll be able to get the job done but then other times like you
said someone will see something you maybe didn't see and they can show you that and especially in the science and
medicine right multiple points of view and multiple people looking at a thing is what makes you discover things that
you never would have so following his graduation from medical school in 1923 Walter went to Paris and he began
postgraduate studies in clinical neurology funded by an American field service scholarship that he had won with
the help of his grandfather uh one one quote unquote so over a long period of time studying at I'm going to play this
pronunciation because I will butcher it and I don't want to uh Walter Dove much deeper into his
studies of Psychiatry and neurology and he was working with patients that he described as quote old women worn out in
the struggle of life and not ready to take the leap into eternity oh [ __ ] never felt more seen in my life damn I
was gonna say to him like we're all just like [ __ ] pouring out for us so Walter spent months in France working
with patients that struggled to pay for medical treatment and he was working as an intern and was also studying the
brains of animals and honing his skills in the lab okay uh his time in Europe was cut short though in the late spring
of 1924. what did he contract well I know you would think but no he received a telegram from his grandfather letting
him know that he'd secured a job for Walter as a senior medical officer in charge of Laboratories at St Elizabeth's
Hospital I'm feeling like Grandpa's pulling a little too many strings here is Walter Walter's a nepo baby he's a
nepo baby wow I will say though it looks like Walter did do the job like he he put in some work and he was good at it
like he was good at his the studies portion of it yeah it's not like he was like the shitty guy that his grandpa was
just like shoveling through these but he was definitely getting escorted through
all the doors that were opening for him the some nepo babies are talented exactly uh but this was a psychiatric
hospital in Washington DC okay he was going to be a senior medical officer in charge of that laboratory got it so by
the time that Walter joined the staff at Saint Elizabeth's Americans were well into a psychiatric crisis that would
eventually transform the mental health fields and treatment for psych psychiatric disorders between 1903 and
1933 American psychiatric hospitals more than doubled in size some had thousands of
patients Which is far too many a lot of this was due to the large number of American men returning home from
fighting in World War II and how deep psychological trauma uh but it also corresponded with a pretty significant
rise in the number of physical and psychological diseases like syphilis alcoholism these were becoming more and
more prevalent the problem was though that diagnosing an illness and housing a patient were not the same as treating
the illness right you know just diagnosing it and sticking them in a room is not treating the illness not
fixing anything so a lot of patients received inpatient treatment that would be very barbaric by today's standards
truly it should be by any standards but it wasn't and these patients were what inspired Walter uh to have a feeling he
described as quote a weird mixture of fear disgust and shame yeah so this is why I say like I think he looked at it
and said this is gross and we need to do something about it but then he was gross
with what he did about it so it's like you know it just didn't go you you watch it and you're like that could have been
a good story yeah but it's not it's like you just went the wrong you you took the wrong path my friend oh
and it sounds like he was just like overconfident in certain abilities yeah he really thought he had it he really
did now Walter was not a holy unsympathetic man like like I've been trying to say in the beginning at least
sure uh the lack of treatment and the horrid state of squalor in which parents patients were forced to live quote
aroused rejection rather than sympathy or interest in fact the thing that basically drove him professionally was a
desire to advance the field of Neurology and psychology in a way that chronically
mentally ill patients could eventually be treated and go on to live productive fulfilling lives that was his idea right
he was like I don't want to stick them in a place and let them rot that's because of my idea that's just like
prison his whole idea here was I want them to go on to live a fulfilling life that was the idea but my goodness it got
lost so Freeman's son Walter Freeman in the third told PBS later he was repelled
by what he saw he saw the nature of illness not as something that required sympathy but as something that required
action do something he wanted to solve the problems of Psychiatry and he wanted to
do it fast and that's that's where the problem lies I think there are certain things that can't go on a fast track I
think it was his his need to get it done his need to be the one who did it his need to be the one that did it now and
it's like if that wasn't there I think there would have been a lot more Nuance to what he was doing and it wouldn't
have turned out the way it did but he just wanted to to crash through and be the one who fixed it all and then and
it's like you could have if you just took the time and the patience and the care
but while his motives may have been to advance his career like in some way and to and there were parts of it that were
to reinforces Ego essentially yeah self-centered there was part of him like we're saying that didn't want to see
people suffer unnecessarily of course it was a lot of things it was amalgamation
of reasons um and it actually is if he could be the one to do with them something about it
but as far as Walter could see it mental illness had a negative effect on society
as well because he said it removed otherwise very capable individuals from the workforce and made them a burden to
themselves and according to him a burden to others uh he wrote I looked around me
at the hundreds of patients and thought what a waste of Manpower and women power
which is kind of a dark way of looking at it it's okay like at for the time period I suppose
that's a very like just black and white way of looking at it like we you could be working and you're not it's very
sterile I don't like the idea of calling these people a burden to others no it's
like you know what I mean like that that takes away any of the care that you put
into your previous statements of like you don't want to see people suffer unnecessarily like that all that stuff
like I want them to live fulfilling lives I want them to be happy like stop that I want them to be able to work if
they want to work like sure but to call them a burden on others and say like you
know like they're a waste of moon but it's like like you went too far that's putting a lot and now you've taken kind
of the any of the Care out of it but by the early 1930s he had spent years studying schizophrenia and other chronic
mental illnesses and concluded that such afflictions were organic and not societal or Environmental
so he figured they could only be solved through medical procedures despite those feelings he had to
entertain the nation's growing interest in psychoanalysis in order to succeed in
the hospital and University settings that he was really drawn to work in right because this was around the time
when it was really booming that you know like psychoanalysis like Freud all that
stuff was like that was what everybody was looking at not looking at the medical portion of it at all right and
he's only wanting to look at the medical portion if they could only join together
and talk to each other now while most scientists and psychologists Focus their attention on the pathology of behaviors
Walter was really one of the few voices that were advocating for medical explanation and solution for the
symptoms uh by the mid-1930s his routine had him waking up at 4am he began the day with writing then he would split his
time between Private Practice his work at the hospital labs and a teaching position at George Washington University
and working as a member of the Mental Health commission of the District of Columbia wow that was every day it's an
overloaded plate right yeah it was and during this period his work was focused on charting activity in the brain by
injecting patients with thorotrast which was a colloidal thorium dioxide that would show up in X-rays and allow the
neurologist to identify certain problem areas now that is really [ __ ] cool very interesting but thorough class oh
no was actually banned in the 1950s so at the time they did not know but in the 1950s in the United States it was banned
because studies found exposure intravascularly to this cause to this uh to the solution causes liver tumors and
inhaling thorium dust can create pancreatic and lung cancer as well oh [ __ ] unfortunately even though it was
banned the effects can be super long lasting and can kind of be like time release they sometimes don't show up for
decades like 30 to 40 years after you've been isn't it scary that there's a lot of compounds and chemicals like that so
scary pretty gnarly the things that we used and thought we understood in medicine and then only find out it's
more dangerous than the ailment it's being used to detect yeah like so scary and I feel like that happened kind of
more often than not oh it happened a lot because it was all exploration right it
was like they didn't know now although he had been steadily increasing his reputation in medical
circles around the country he knew that his Ambitions were greater than one person could manage alone so he's
suddenly sitting there saying okay I need to work with it to be a little bit of a team player here fortunately
Freeman's ideal partner arrived at George Washington University in 1935. heyo he was a young neurosurgeon named
James Winston watts and like Walter James Watts came from a pretty prestigious medical family he had
quickly risen to the top of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Vania hospital and then he had transferred to
Washington DC as well but also like Freeman Watts believed in psycho surgery which is what is now known as
neurosurgery it was known before as psychosurgery and that he believed that was the key to treating and eradicating
mental illness so they were on the same wavelengths right together now the meeting of these two what would
be Pioneers in Neuroscience coincided with a growing scientific interest in the function of the frontal lobes of the
brain they certainly were because in fact in the 1930s and 40s the frontal lobe was
considered to be the most important part of the brain throughout your lifespan not just in childhood development people
believed any injury to the front lobe in adulthood even could be a problem for ethical Behavior like you know uh
control like willpower uh but research particularly do hebbs paper from 1945 which was called man's front lobes a
critical review it later began they later began to see him through research that the front lobes are very important
to development and they are vital for building a framework of intelligence skill building but once you're developed
that's kind of it right uh they don't play as huge a role anymore not to say they don't play any role that's just not
as big as once thought so he said large frontal lobe lesions in children were very much something to worry about or
keep an eye on but in adults they didn't didn't super effect IQ or ability to make like ethical moral decisions to the
extent that could be considered the sole issue do you know what part of the brain
does um no okay no I did not look into that that's okay uh but remember we're in the era where
they believe this is the most important thing about the brain the frontal lobes we know different now that there's many
different things that come together to do that but back then frontal lobe was it regardless of your age frontal lobe
or boss truly so in their earliest work together Freeman and Watts conducted experiments that not only confirmed
their belief about the function of the frontal lobes but also what could happen when that section of the brain became
impaired um they wrote with an intact brain an individual is able to foresee to forecast the certain the results of
certain activities but when the frontal lobes were damaged or removed surgically they said the
person affected the person affected shows a lack of initiative and a tendency to procrastinate under such
conditions the patient Loop suffers a loss of self-consciousness and becomes indifferent to the opinions of others
okay interesting that is interesting while they may have been at the Forefront of
their field Freeman and Watts weren't alone in exploring the ways in which the brain could be surgically altered to
correct undesirable Behavior because in 1935 egus Moniz who we talked about at the top a Portuguese neurosurgeon had
been experimenting with a procedure he called the leukotomy no a Neurosurgical procedure he believed could definitely
cure certain mental illnesses and other maladies by basically severing the pathways to the frontal lobes of the
brain in a procedure that would eventually become known as the free prefrontal lobotomy he drilled holes
into the sides or top of the skull to allow access to the frontal lobes and then he used to scalpel to cut nerve
fibers this is giving me a headache and he believed sometimes if I think too much about having a brain it freaks my
brain out yeah I can understand that you know what I mean because you're really not supposed to think about it yeah
she's supposed to be there yeah but he believed that the surgery would force the brain to develop new neural Pathways
and more beneficial emotional responses so if you sever those ties it's like forcing a river another way you know
which I can see where that thought does come you build the dam it's gonna have to go a different way yeah you know
now although Walter was skeptical of moniz's theory that's simply severing the connection would cause the brain to
regrow healthier connections he couldn't argue with the Portuguese neurosurgeons
published results claiming five and six patients were cured of their Affliction of their lobotomies some years later
true though Moniz would clarify that only about 35 percent of his patients were cured while another 35 showed some
improvement yeah also he rarely followed up with patients Beyond a few weeks after their surgeries so if there were
any negative effects from the surgeries he wouldn't have heard about them and he
definitely wouldn't have included them in his research fantastic so we're gonna go with that's a way less number than
even 35 yeah sounds ethical so frustrated by American Medical Industries increasing interest and
Reliance in psychoanalysis over medical treatment for mental illnesses Freeman and wife let's begin considering how the
leukotomy could be used in the United States so they finally got their chance to experiment with the technique in the
fall of 1936. they did this on a patient who is a 63 year old housewife named Alice Hammond she had come to them
seeking help with her anxiety oh no now by her own report Alice had suffered from anxiety anxieties insomnia
and depression for as long as she could remember that's true like she had been hospitalized for nervous breakdowns in
the past but she said nothing alleviated her symptoms she tried everything so steadfast in his belief that all
mental illness was organic and medical rather than social and behavioral Walter deemed Alice to be a perfect candidate
for the first ever lobotomy performed in the United States in reality though Alice's afflictions were likely
definitely mostly behavioral as as well as Medical Society yeah she had apparently grown up very well
off very spoiled like she herself said I was a very spoiled child okay she would
throw Tantrums to get her way was given everything she wanted when she did that so when she entered adulthood she didn't
have coping skills or an ability to express her wants and needs in a healthy way she would just get mad upset and
anxious about it so that was for sure behavioral answers exactly I just said Society earlier I don't know if yeah it
was just like just Society you know honestly that is just the Imperial Society so in the years after that she
was experiencing also a lot of unfortunate events in her life on top of this like ability to have no coping
skills whatsoever uh her two-year-old child had died oh wow uh her sister had been murdered at the hands of her
brother-in-law so her husband yep um and again it at this time Society was not super comfortable with negative
emotions so Alice learned to keep those anxieties all inside which led to a long
history of having a lot of acting out publicly issues it got worse and worse her mental illness where she was
exposing herself to the neighbors oh no verbally abusing her husband and she started relying on tranquilizers just to
make it through the day oh man because that's the thing you you push those anxieties down and you don't talk about
them you keep pushing them exactly they explode they do damage inside so by the time Alice came to the Freeman and the
Freeman and Watts she was anxiety walking at the end of her room yeah she they said she rung her hands she
thrashed around during the examination like she was just she was an anxious ball of anxiety oh that's awful um so
really with few if any other options Alice and her husband consented to a test be the test case for this procedure
wow um on September 14th 1936 and again she became became the first person in the United States to receive a lobotomy
so at first the procedure seemed to be a success Alice was recovering pretty well
from surgery six days later though Freeman received word from Alice's husband that she was still calm and she
didn't seem anxious but she was having trouble speaking and writing and that she was quote almost too Placid
so fortunately once the swelling in the brain subsided which took several weeks of course very intense procedure she did
return more or less to normal and I get I guess throughout the remainder of her life though even though
her anxieties were less like it did less than a lot of that she did experience a
lot of symptoms that were very much probably related to the surgery like convulsions oh uh that very much
negatively affected her quality of life but even through all this they considered this experiment with the
Alice a resounding success and they wasted no time reporting this to their colleagues it's so interesting that it
did sort of help yeah in a way yeah but it it created more issues yeah because I
think it kind of to me it almost feels like adults the senses a bit so her anxieties just
weren't being felt right as intensely right it's just dulling a feeling you know yeah which is scary that's very
scary but he became determined at this point to refine the procedure because he wanted to reduce those side effects to
make better success rates so he didn't want to lose momentum so Freeman and Watts began looking for a
second candidate for surgery just weeks after Alice Hammond um and it feels like too soon when you
don't know this because you need to refine it exactly and you don't even know yet what she's going to go through
down the road exactly so they found a willing participant 59 year old bookkeeper Emma Egger so like Hamot she
had struggled with anxiety and depression for most of her life her symptoms were so extreme at times that
she suffered hallucinations she had a profound and irrational fear of being poisoned oh that was something she was
dealing with and apparently during the procedure for like doing her lobotomy the leucatome broke down and the
leucatome was the surgical tool used to perform the lobotomy it was invented in the 1940s by Canadian neurosurgeon by
the name of Dr Kenneth McKenzie and it almost looks like a syringe type shape with a long protrusion at the end that
gets inserted into the hole in the skull and then into the brain itself like a syringe there's a plunger on the back
and this is used to kind of like send the wire thing into the brain to do the work okay then the doctor uses it to
rotate it and that cores out some brain tissue it broke down during the procedure
that's not but they got it to work and the surgery was considered a success with Walter later noting that the
patient was responsive and cheerful after surgery but he said although entirely lacking in
spontaneity so the success of Emma Eggers surgery very much encouraged Freeman and watts
and they wanted to continue employing moniz's leukotomy which Freeman had re-christened the lobotomy I wonder what
made him want to change it yeah I think he just wanted to make it his own yeah I
mean well he wanted to change it to be the transorbital lobotomy so he could do it quicker that's why he changed that he
didn't want the like recovery times he didn't want sir hospital stays he wanted to be able to do this inpatient do a lot
of them and there's just certain things that you can't do like that and after this success patients were lined up to
receive what Freeman and Watts were touting as a groundbreaking treatment it shows you how bad mental illness can be
that people were so desperate to get their skull and brain dug into just to get relief yeah it's it's like that
should show you how bad it can be in because people were they were desperately asking to have their skull
opened up and they're brain scrambled to get relief when people say crippling anxiety I don't think they necessarily
understand crippling like willing to have your brain yeah scrambled with a random tool that's just for Relief
that's like an electric toothbrush just to get any kind of really I can't imagine because that's the thing I mean
like I struggle with anxiety like now today but I can't imagine what it felt like back then when they didn't have an
understanding of it oh yeah because nobody's understanding because you're taking the time to know if you have a
panic attack afterwards you're like oh my God like I I feel like I was just completely out of control of my own body
and to feel like that every single day I can't imagine and to have people probably look at you like oh like what
she exactly you're like that's a burden yeah like that's annoying I mean you feel like a burden you know like that's
all of course it's like a cycle so you can see why people wear but at the same time like you said like holy [ __ ] people
were like just lining up lining up for it and it didn't and they were getting successes out of it what they were
deeming as successes and Reporting as successes and it didn't take long though until these perfect outcomes turned into
bad outcomes uh for instance one early patient who received the surgery to treat chronic depression was transformed
into a chronic talker oh wow who would literally not stop speaking like like could not control it stop like it was
uncontrollable speaking and also became like um obsessively compelled to spend hours every day rowing on the Potomac
River like just wearing another patient seen um for treatment of her anxiety and
obsessive-compulsive disorder came out of surgery cured of her symptoms but just a few weeks later both her
depression and compulsive behaviors returned stronger and more disabling than they were before really
so there was a mix of outcomes it's interesting how they're doing the same procedure on people but it's affecting
them differently I think the brain is so interesting it's not refined and it's you're not it is not the same procedure
I'm sure you're not severing the same connections every time so you're getting different results this is a wildly
erratic procedure right in and of itself because that's the thing so they're like
you said they're going through the eyeball and they're they're not doing that yet he hasn't even made the trans
orbital lobotomy yet he's just throwing lobotomy yeah so he can see where he's severing I mean he to an extent okay
yeah okay but this is just the lobotomy okay the lobotomy in and of itself is absurd like it's just in Wild
but because he that he hasn't even created the trans orbital okay okay by the winter of 1937 Freeman and Watts had
begun making the rounds on the lecture circuit talking about their successes the potential of the technique to
eradicate Mental Illness but and while some in the field were pretty receptive to the experiments and results
a lot of people in the fields of Neurology and Psychiatry were very skeptical and suggested that the
positive results could just be as easily be as a result of surgical shock and the
result of the procedure then then would be of the procedure itself which sounds like it was the case because it wears
off at first they're like oh wow I'm cured and then a couple weeks later they start having all these other issues
Freeman and Watts continued right on though in their work of psychosurgery quote unquote and they were very
confident that they were on the verge of a major advancement in this field so in
the late 1930s the medical and psychiatric Fields were very split among the majority who believed that the mind
a nebulous concept referring just to like thought and cognition that's what the mind is could and should be treated
as separate from the body and then there were those like Freeman and Watts who can were convinced that medical science
not talk therapy was the only way to address address it mental illness now the problem wasn't that one was right
and one was wrong they were both right to some extent and both wrong to some extent each side believed that they were
right and the other one was wrong the only way and that it was this like you know issue intersection here and impasse
that created a lot of tension between Skeptics and advocates for of the prefrontal lobotomy and drove Freeman
and Watts's work in the field now determined to prove their Skeptics wrong Freeman and Watts Revisited some of the
earlier cases in which the patient showed no signs of improvement um and this wasn't really helping their
argument that like it was working and in one case there was a woman who was plagued with fears of germs and
contamination and the second surgery on her frontal lobes led to a very difficult recovery for her and her
thinking was confused and inattentive following the surgery in another case it was a woman who had been struggling for
years with suicidal ideation then her depression only got way worse after the second surgery and she tried to end her
life by setting herself on fire oh after the second surgery so it's bad now and it's like now which
this should have been I mean done done move on something else has got to be done go back to your papers but no by
the end of the 1930s the setbacks experienced by Freeman and Watts were compounded when their friend and
colleague egus Moniz was attacked in his office now remember egas Moniz created the lobotomy yes in 1939 he was attacked
by a former patient who shot him four times uh it caused him to be paralyzed and he
ended up having to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life wow so like this is showing you you're ruining
people's lives here like you're not helping this is not helping you have a former patient coming to like Express
his not in the correct way but this should tell you something now Freeman and Watts experienced another major
setback in the summer of 1941 when a very Infamous lobotomy was performed on a very well-known family member uh
Rosemary Kennedy and it very much failed to produce the desired outcome and would
eventually be remembered publicly as one of their if not their greatest failures
oh man and we will be getting into the lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy in part two because I really want to get into that
one because it's pretty horrific I only know I would say like the Baseline of that entire story and for what I do know
is horrible it's terrific I can't imagine a tough family did to her it really isn't what these people did to
her it's because she was very young when she got her she's 23. yeah look up I encourage you before you get to part two
look up photos of Rosemary Kennedy what a [ __ ] cool chick she looks like there's a picture of her like smoking a
cigar she's wearing this like Fedora and she's just like she's also a knockout oh
yeah stunning yeah stunning Beauty and it's like and she and everyone and obviously
we'll get to it in part two everyone who knew her in her personal life said she had one of the most likable
personalities I remember she struggled and we'll talk about why she struggled and she had some issues of course that
should have been addressed and they did try to address I don't know if they did a great job sounds like talk therapy
would have been a better version I think she needed a mix of many things and they
just didn't give her the proper thing but everyone who knew her in her personal life said like yeah she
struggled she had some issues you know of course she could be a little unpredictable because of her issues but
they said her personality was [ __ ] top-notch like like teachers loved her people who knew her loved her like she
was just a very likable human being and she was funny she had like a good sense of humor right and she was just like a
badass like she was going to be a cool chick they killed her without killing her oh 100 and as will she she knew what
happened later and she yeah that's heartbreaking so we will get into that in part two because it's a
pretty heavy part yeah but this is the beginning of Walter Freeman I've always been interested in lobotomies and like
that whole I've been interested in his career it's interesting it's horrifying it's like a nightmare to me so yeah
hopefully you guys are are finding this is fascinating and horrifying as I did I
find it super fascinating especially it's gonna get worse even what we've covered in part one so
um uh excited is not the word I'm anxious to get to part two part two is gonna be rough so yeah all right well
with that being said we do hope that you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not to worry that you perform
lobotomies on people because guess what it didn't work yikes no should have been
stopped right in the beginning yeah stop it right in its tracks just therapy it's
great [Music]

When Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz developed the lobotomy in 1935, it was little more than a crude surgery developed as a blanket treatment for mental illness that involved drilling into the skull and scrambling the neural connections in the frontal lobe. Less than a decade later, however, American neurologist Walter Jackson Freeman had refined Moniz’s procedure and developed a non-surgical procedure that could be performed in a doctor’s office, which he called a transorbital lobotomy.

What he touted as successes, quickly turned into a series of life-altering failures...but he kept going.

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Brief Summary

Walter Freeman's lobotomy procedures led to tragic outcomes, including the case of Rosemary Kennedy, highlighting the dark history of mental health treatment.

Key points

The Tragic Case of Rosemary Kennedy. Exploring the horrific lobotomy performed on Rosemary Kennedy, a tragic story that rocked the nation.
Walter Freeman's Dark Legacy. Examining the controversial practices of Dr. Walter Freeman, who pushed the boundaries of mental health treatment.
Freeman's Struggles as an Intern. Freeman struggled with teamwork, preferring to work independently despite his prestigious training.
Walter's Dark Perspective. Freeman viewed mental illness as a societal burden, leading to a controversial outlook.
The Dangers of Medical Practices. Exploration of harmful medical practices that were once thought safe, highlighting the risks of early medicine.
Alice's Lobotomy: A Historic First. Alice became the first person in the U.S. to receive a lobotomy, initially deemed a success.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He kept going at the expense of so many people.

Commenting on Dr. Freeman's disregard for patient outcomes.

4:03WatchAug 18, 2023

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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