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How Lobotomies Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. It's called Stuff You Should Know. It's Josh
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Speaker 1: and Chuck Compson in Long Beach together. Now you know
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Speaker 1: you're in trouble. What's up, Chuck? You loven sitting on
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Speaker 1: that one? That's good? Thanks? Thank you, Chuck? How you
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Speaker 1: doing well? Are you pretty good? I'm feeling great, actually, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: I am glad to be alive. Yes, so, Chuck, Yes,
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Speaker 1: I think this could arguably pan out to be our
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Speaker 1: greatest podcast ever. No, I really don't think so. Chuck
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Speaker 1: did the cheek thing twice before this one. It's kind
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Speaker 1: of enough to do it a second time. And I
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Speaker 1: don't think we've ever had a topic that Chuck and
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Speaker 1: I were more intensely interested in than this one. I know.
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Speaker 1: It kind of just came out of nowhere, and it's
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Speaker 1: really well, not out of nowhere, because it's historical, but
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Speaker 1: um in our eyes, out of nowhere, which if in
1:01
Speaker 1: our eyes? Yeah, a little foreshadowing from Charles Bryant. Nice one, Shuck,
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Speaker 1: If you will get off of L O L Cats
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Speaker 1: for a second and go check your iTunes. You'll find
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Speaker 1: that the title of this one is how lobotomies work,
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Speaker 1: And that's what we're gonna be talking about our lobotomy. Fascinating,
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Speaker 1: it really is. Lobotomy is kind of exist in h
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Speaker 1: this little um segment of twentieth century culture, medical madness,
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Speaker 1: I guess you could say, right right, and pop culture,
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Speaker 1: because you still hear it being thrown around like boys
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Speaker 1: might lobotomize me, scramble my brain. But it's kind of
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Speaker 1: exactly the way it happened. Yeah, yeah, So, Chuck, you're
1:38
Speaker 1: a lover of great cinema, right, of course, of course
1:41
Speaker 1: you've seen one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, right, I
1:44
Speaker 1: have a poster, you do, Yeah, a good one, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: the one in Jack Nicholson laughing with the watch cap on. Yeah,
1:49
Speaker 1: it's a good one. Um. So, of course you remember
1:52
Speaker 1: the the pivotal scene of the movie where McMurphy is
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Speaker 1: um lobotomized for being unruly, tries to kill them their
2:00
Speaker 1: hatchet because nurse ratchet, Nurse ratchet hatchet. That was a
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Speaker 1: Freudian slip right there. It was. She was a Hatchet. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Um so, uh she was mean, and I'm totally with you.
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Speaker 1: It was the Freudian slip part that got me. I
2:12
Speaker 1: had like eight jokes going in my head at once,
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Speaker 1: and I was like, I can't say that. I can't
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Speaker 1: say that. I can't say that. It's like the terminator. Yeah,
2:20
Speaker 1: um so yeah. So he tries to kill Nurse Ratchet
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Speaker 1: because she was a terrible nurse and kind of evil,
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Speaker 1: very evil, And so he gets lobotomized and they don't
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Speaker 1: show the procedure. Don't worry if you ever want to
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Speaker 1: know what one was like, we're going to go into
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Speaker 1: grizzly detail in a minute. Um. And he comes out
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Speaker 1: just kind of this drooling imbecile, which I have to
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Speaker 1: remind everybody was actually a medical term before it was imbecile,
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Speaker 1: moron and idiot were all degrees of mental retardation. Isn't
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Speaker 1: that weird? Yeah? Of course this is at the same
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Speaker 1: time that people were performing the bottom those It seems
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Speaker 1: like very archaic, even though it wasn't that long ago. Yeah, well,
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Speaker 1: let's set the scene. Okay, all right, So we're talking
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Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, and the nineteen thirties were a
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Speaker 1: terrible time to be nuts. Basically, you got locked up
3:14
Speaker 1: in a straight jacket to keep you from eating your
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Speaker 1: own thess um or throwing it at orderlies or doing
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Speaker 1: anything really crazy. And that was about it. Um. They
3:25
Speaker 1: had certain um, certain techniques like shock therapy. Right, what
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Speaker 1: do they use? Uh they still use shock therapy here
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Speaker 1: and there? Actually, so well you have like electro convulsive therapy,
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Speaker 1: and you had apparently they also used to use insulin. Okay, insulin, right,
3:43
Speaker 1: we know how bad that is from I can't remember
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Speaker 1: one of our aging podcasts, right, Um. And they would
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Speaker 1: basically inject a hefty dose of insulin into a patient.
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Speaker 1: Um too the okay, chuck my paper wrestling was going
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Speaker 1: to get the wrath and Jerry, they know we used
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Speaker 1: crypt sheets, buddy. Um. So they inject the patient with
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Speaker 1: the hefty dose of insulin and um would basically shock
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Speaker 1: their system, possibly causing convulsions. There was another drug just
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Speaker 1: to subdue them. Hold on, I'm getting to that. This
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Speaker 1: is the craziest part. This is this was the grasp
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Speaker 1: that medical science had on mental illness at the time.
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Speaker 1: There's another drug called metrozol, which was a respiratory and
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Speaker 1: um circulatory stimulant and then hefty doses it to produce
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Speaker 1: shock and convulsions. So if you'll notice, all three of
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Speaker 1: these produced convulsions shock therapy. And the reason that they
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Speaker 1: did that was because there was a suspicion that there
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Speaker 1: is a link between epilepsy, convulsions, and mental illness and
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Speaker 1: that if you had one, you couldn't have the other.
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Speaker 1: So by producing convulsions, they thought that they were treating
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Speaker 1: mental illness. Unbelievable. Yeah, so you could have just had
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Speaker 1: epilepsy and that that they would sit you in the
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Speaker 1: elect show convulsive shock therapy chair and to treat you. Yeah,
5:03
Speaker 1: they'd stick a little paddle in your mouth and turn
5:05
Speaker 1: on the juice to tell you what man, I like.
5:07
Speaker 1: I sometimes look back and say, boy, the nineteen fifties,
5:10
Speaker 1: that would have been cool to look back then, But
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Speaker 1: then you hear stories like this and you kind of
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Speaker 1: forget about the downside. Yeah. Ect is definitely one of
5:17
Speaker 1: the downside of this era, right all right? So um,
5:20
Speaker 1: another problem with this was that the mental um mental care. Wow,
5:27
Speaker 1: have you had a little botomy? I had a little
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Speaker 1: bit of and yeah, um no, I had some metro's
5:32
Speaker 1: whole earlier. I'm all jacked up. UM. The the the
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Speaker 1: state of mental hospitals in the US in the in
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Speaker 1: the thirties and forties was that they were overcrowded, right,
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Speaker 1: because I mean, if you can't treat anybody, really, you
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Speaker 1: can't treat their mental illness, which they come in there in. Yeah, right,
5:50
Speaker 1: they wanted docile patients, they wanted people that didn't cause
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Speaker 1: trouble and really anyway that they could get there was
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Speaker 1: kind of okay at the time. And this right, and
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Speaker 1: this was also before drug therapy was created, So in
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Speaker 1: the thirties, nineteen thirty six, this new procedure comes about, right, Well,
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Speaker 1: it was the thirty five in Portugal, you're right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: sorry about that. Yeah, that was doctor Antonio IGAs Monies
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Speaker 1: and Dr Almida Lima in Portugal performed the first lobotomies
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Speaker 1: by drilling holes into the skull on either side of
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Speaker 1: the prefrontal cortex and injecting alcohol and there to destroy
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Speaker 1: the fibers connected. And this was actually based on um
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Speaker 1: an earlier study from nineteen thirty three by a couple
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Speaker 1: of Yale researchers who removed the prefrontal cortex is from
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Speaker 1: a pair of monkeys and the other one Binkie will say. Yeah, Um,
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Speaker 1: these two monkeys had their prefrontal cortex cort texas removed,
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Speaker 1: and um, the researchers found that they could still they
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Speaker 1: still had intellect, but they were lacking the emotion. Led
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Speaker 1: to violent outbursts when they didn't get their way. Zey,
7:03
Speaker 1: by the way, I like Binky better. Um, can we
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Speaker 1: stay with Binki? Okay? So the the doctor, um, oh,
7:11
Speaker 1: the Portugue Fulton and Carlisle, I'll know you're going back
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Speaker 1: to Portugal. Yeah. Dr Moniz saw Fulton present. Um, one
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Speaker 1: of the Yale researchers saw Fulton present his findings and
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Speaker 1: he thought, huh, my mental patients act like monkeys, you know,
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Speaker 1: violent outbursts when they don't you know, when they see
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Speaker 1: things that aren't really there. Right, So let me get
7:33
Speaker 1: my hands on a cadaver and see what I can see,
7:35
Speaker 1: what I can work out with the Brian. So this early,
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Speaker 1: this early, that was called the pre frontal lobotomy, right,
7:41
Speaker 1: started out, like you said, by drilling holes in the
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Speaker 1: school and adding alcohol. And the whole reason why chuck
7:48
Speaker 1: the prefrontal cortex, Why the funnel loab? What's so important
7:51
Speaker 1: about that? Well? The pre funnel lob but cortex Josh
7:55
Speaker 1: has a number of complex functions um called executive functions
7:59
Speaker 1: as they're known as we're talking high level decision making, planning, reasoning,
8:04
Speaker 1: understanding personality, it's personal expression, that right thing. So basically
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Speaker 1: your personality, the way you create things, the way you
8:11
Speaker 1: see the world, and how you react to the world,
8:14
Speaker 1: g emotions, this is all this is all generated here.
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Speaker 1: It's originates in the prefrontal court. And you're stabbing the
8:22
Speaker 1: front of your head right now speaking. Uh and so
8:25
Speaker 1: that as we all know that the brain is connected,
8:27
Speaker 1: it's all connected together, sure, sending and receiving signals like
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Speaker 1: like mass email and uh So, what you have here,
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Speaker 1: You've got two types of matter, gray and white matter.
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Speaker 1: Gray matter includes neurons and brain cells and blood vessels
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Speaker 1: and things like that. White matter is axons and nerve fibers,
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Speaker 1: and they connect the gray matter and carry messages with
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Speaker 1: electric impulses. So the gray matter is where these impulses
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Speaker 1: are generated. The white matter translates them or transfers them, transmits,
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Speaker 1: it transmits one of the trans uh So a lobotomy.
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Speaker 1: What that does is it's intended to sever the white
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Speaker 1: matter between the different areas of gray matter, thus interrupting
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Speaker 1: the transmissions. Right. And the problem, um with dr monies
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Speaker 1: is technique. The early technique using alcohol is like you said,
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Speaker 1: the brains all connected, and alcohol, being a liquid is
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Speaker 1: kind of hard to keep in one place. So it
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Speaker 1: started to go and destroy other areas, right. But he
9:29
Speaker 1: was onto something. He was onto something by destroying the
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Speaker 1: white matter, right, So instead he decided to be a
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Speaker 1: little more precise and he kept with the whole drilling
9:39
Speaker 1: method actually based on an ancient um ancient method of
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Speaker 1: brain surgery called trepidation, which actually what Gosha we could
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Speaker 1: I'm gonna be in trouble here. We had a fan
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Speaker 1: right in and suggest trepidation and that's what got me
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Speaker 1: on the botomies in the first place. And I apologize.
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Speaker 1: So if you're out there listening, oh you don't remember
9:58
Speaker 1: the fans, thank you, nameless fans. We love you bank
10:03
Speaker 1: or Becky um. Yeah. And actually in the article how
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Speaker 1: the botomies work, um, there's a cool relief from a
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Speaker 1: horonymous box Um painting of some early physician trepanning a
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Speaker 1: patient and he's got like a little segment of the
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Speaker 1: skull lifted off in the brain's exposed and he's just
10:22
Speaker 1: poking around in there. Um. But okay, so he's still
10:26
Speaker 1: dr Monis is still using the drilling method, but now
10:29
Speaker 1: he's inserting instruments in there. He inserted this one that
10:32
Speaker 1: sounded like, um, it's a handle with a little loopy
10:36
Speaker 1: wire that comes out. But yes, so when you when
10:40
Speaker 1: you push it, when you push down the back of it,
10:43
Speaker 1: the loop extends out and then you can pull it
10:45
Speaker 1: in and just basically removed hunks of prefrontal cortex, right,
10:50
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what hopefully matter. Yeah, you would say, um,
10:55
Speaker 1: and it was successful. Well yeah, to too again to
10:59
Speaker 1: very degrees and maybe not again because I think that's
11:02
Speaker 1: the first time we've said that. But yeah, the lobotomy
11:05
Speaker 1: was successful to varying degrees, vary varying degrees. But there
11:10
Speaker 1: was this guy who went and saw, um, dr Monies
11:14
Speaker 1: perform one of these. Yeah, this work gets good. And
11:17
Speaker 1: this guy was named Dr Walter Freeman. And for probably
11:20
Speaker 1: about what fifty thousand people, uh in the U s Alone,
11:26
Speaker 1: this meeting between these two men was the worst thing
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Speaker 1: that ever happened in the history of humanity, because that's
11:33
Speaker 1: about how many people were lobotomized between for about over
11:36
Speaker 1: about a seven year period in the US. Was it
11:38
Speaker 1: just seven years? Okay? So then there was many many
11:44
Speaker 1: more actually, um, but yeah, the Dr Walter Freeman became
11:49
Speaker 1: an immediate UM evangelists. He was called for Lobotomyes. Um.
11:57
Speaker 1: He he tried monies as technique with a with a
12:01
Speaker 1: partner um and did it successfully for a while. But
12:04
Speaker 1: the problem is it was still surgery. It required a
12:08
Speaker 1: surgeon to do it um operating room. Right. If Freeman
12:11
Speaker 1: was actually not a neurosurgeon, he was a neurologist, required anesthetic. Yeah,
12:16
Speaker 1: so there there were some some drawbacks to it in
12:19
Speaker 1: Freeman's of pain, right, expense being one of them. Time
12:22
Speaker 1: and resources. So he created something that was a lot handier,
12:26
Speaker 1: a lot easier, and a lot quicker. And that is
12:29
Speaker 1: what we call the transorbital or ice pick lobotomy, right,
12:34
Speaker 1: Can I say that this is he determined that if
12:36
Speaker 1: you took something which is technically called an orbito class
12:42
Speaker 1: but it really looks sort of like an ice pick.
12:44
Speaker 1: You said it yesterday on our web test, Uh, call
12:49
Speaker 1: it arose by any other name exactly. So you put
12:52
Speaker 1: this ice pick over over the eyeball but under the
12:56
Speaker 1: bone there what's that called between the eyeball and the eyelid,
12:59
Speaker 1: but ill on the eye until the back of the
13:02
Speaker 1: orbital bone. Right, So, once you get to the back
13:04
Speaker 1: of the orble orbital bone, there's a little resistance there
13:07
Speaker 1: because it's bone, and so enter a little silver hammer
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Speaker 1: and so he just pinks on that thing until it
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Speaker 1: cracks through. And then he's got a pretty clean passageway
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Speaker 1: to the frontal cortex. And so you've got an ice
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Speaker 1: pick sticking out of your eye. He uh, he scrambles
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Speaker 1: it up a little bit once it's in there, and
13:26
Speaker 1: then he does the same thing on the other side,
13:28
Speaker 1: and ten minutes later if you're lobotomized, literally, so he
13:32
Speaker 1: do both sides right right. Um, he got kind of
13:36
Speaker 1: good at this, Yeah, Dr Freeman got really I guess
13:40
Speaker 1: you could say good at this, or at least very fast. Um.
13:44
Speaker 1: In one two week period in West Virginia, he performed
13:47
Speaker 1: lobotomy is on two people, and in one day he
13:52
Speaker 1: performed lobotomies on twenty five patients right one day and
13:56
Speaker 1: one day. So he's just basically bringing him in and
14:00
Speaker 1: sending him out. He's exactly doing that. Actually read an
14:02
Speaker 1: interview with one of his assistants at the time, and
14:05
Speaker 1: he said he would literally not take breaks. As the
14:07
Speaker 1: patient left, another one would be brought in ten minutes later. Boom.
14:11
Speaker 1: And I don't think we mentioned yet he before he
14:13
Speaker 1: does this, he doesn't use anesthetic. He knocks him out
14:17
Speaker 1: with electro shock, right, So it's making use of too
14:20
Speaker 1: extremely primitive and violent techniques right time. And the result was,
14:28
Speaker 1: like we said, varied. I mean, it ranged anywhere from
14:31
Speaker 1: people being satisfied and you know, seemingly successful, like a
14:35
Speaker 1: highly emotional people suicidal all of a sudden, being more
14:39
Speaker 1: docile and not so worried to uh to death, and
14:43
Speaker 1: people rendered vegetables literally. So yeah, well the map. Dr
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Speaker 1: Freeman actually referred to lobotomyes um, informally as soul surgery. Yeah.
14:52
Speaker 1: I hate that. The reason why is because he was
14:55
Speaker 1: basically removing what kind of what makes us human. People
14:59
Speaker 1: could still function under a successful lobotomy. People could still function,
15:04
Speaker 1: they could still talk, but they weren't They weren't doing anything,
15:08
Speaker 1: they weren't bringing anything to the table. There was no
15:10
Speaker 1: reason for them to exist so much anymore for the
15:13
Speaker 1: personality surgery exactly right, um and uh he would Uh
15:18
Speaker 1: he did it, um again so fast, it's so so often.
15:23
Speaker 1: And he had a touch of a showman to him
15:26
Speaker 1: that he basically did. He had a lobotomobile in which
15:29
Speaker 1: he performed demonstrations. Right. He toured the country all over
15:33
Speaker 1: the place. I think he ended up doing His estimates
15:36
Speaker 1: run from two thousand to five thousand between nineteen six
15:40
Speaker 1: and nineteen sixty seven, transorbital lobotomies UM in twenty three
15:44
Speaker 1: states in the US. Right, he performed with both hands.
15:46
Speaker 1: He would stick the ice picks in with both hands
15:48
Speaker 1: at once to add a little flare showmanship. Yeah, so
15:52
Speaker 1: he was basically performing shows, lobotomy shows. Um. And not
15:55
Speaker 1: everybody reacted well to these. Um. There's season surgeons who
16:01
Speaker 1: had seen tons of gore and blood and horrible things
16:04
Speaker 1: in their lifetimes. Um would vomit watching these things. Some
16:09
Speaker 1: had to leave. Um. There was a nurse whose account
16:13
Speaker 1: I read of watching a lobotomy said, uh, the when
16:16
Speaker 1: he moved the ice picks back and forth, it made
16:19
Speaker 1: the sound of tearing cloth. Um. Later on in the USSR,
16:24
Speaker 1: which actually banned lobotomies, and I think nineteen is embarrassing. Yeah, well,
16:32
Speaker 1: fourteen years before we did right. Yeah. Um. A physician
16:38
Speaker 1: named Nikolai or Serinsky, thanks dusky, um he called. He
16:47
Speaker 1: said that lobotomies violate the principles of humanity and change
16:50
Speaker 1: an insane person into an idiot. Again remember a medical
16:54
Speaker 1: tournament at the time. Um, So there, I imagine that
16:59
Speaker 1: there was something that affected you. Were you human being,
17:05
Speaker 1: like a real human being seeing this this rough, violent,
17:09
Speaker 1: um misguided or unguided procedure being performed, that it would
17:14
Speaker 1: affect you in some way, like some very primal party
17:16
Speaker 1: of you would say, that's not supposed to happen. Plus,
17:19
Speaker 1: there was no official scientific basis for this. It was basically, hey,
17:24
Speaker 1: look at the result in some cases. That is what
17:28
Speaker 1: they were kind of basing this whole thing on. And also,
17:30
Speaker 1: as we were saying about Freeman being a showman and
17:33
Speaker 1: doing it so fast, there was one visit to a
17:36
Speaker 1: mental institution in Iowa. I don't remember what year it was, um,
17:40
Speaker 1: but Freeman killed three people in one visit, and one
17:45
Speaker 1: of the people this is so awful. Um. He was
17:47
Speaker 1: doing his little show off thing with the two picks
17:49
Speaker 1: at once, instead of as his own procedure dictated one
17:54
Speaker 1: and then the other side. He was doing two picks
17:56
Speaker 1: at once. So the patients on the table um with
17:59
Speaker 1: two ice pick sticking out of his eyes, and Freeman says,
18:03
Speaker 1: I'm going to take a photo of this, steps back
18:05
Speaker 1: to take a photo. One of the ice pick slips
18:07
Speaker 1: and kills the patient instantly. So apparently Freeman was said
18:11
Speaker 1: to have basically just packed up right then and moved
18:14
Speaker 1: on to the next place without missing a bead or staying. Geez,
18:17
Speaker 1: that's packed up the lobotomobile. Yeah, hit the you know
18:20
Speaker 1: one person he lobotomized, Josh, I know you do. He
18:24
Speaker 1: lobotomized John F. Kennedy's sister, Rosemary. Dr Freeman did in Uh.
18:30
Speaker 1: Rosemary was twenty three years old and uh, early on
18:33
Speaker 1: her childhood she was shy and easy going, they say,
18:37
Speaker 1: but as a teenager, shocker, she became rebellious and moody,
18:41
Speaker 1: which and that's what struck me in a lot of
18:43
Speaker 1: these cases is so many of them we're just normal
18:45
Speaker 1: human emotions, like anything from postpartum depression to you know,
18:50
Speaker 1: an overactive child. You know, it's just unbelievable. So she
18:54
Speaker 1: was lobotomized and afterward was rendered basically she couldn't speak,
19:00
Speaker 1: She had the mental capacity of an infant couldn't control
19:03
Speaker 1: or bodily functions, and the Kennedy family basically from that
19:06
Speaker 1: point on said that she Ah was mentally retarded, which
19:12
Speaker 1: they claimed that she may have been before, but who knows.
19:16
Speaker 1: You want to talk about another guy, Howie, Chuck and
19:19
Speaker 1: I have a shared hero. He is an indomitable three
19:23
Speaker 1: fifty pounds six ft three bus driver who has this gentle,
19:29
Speaker 1: tender personality. And his name is Howard Dully. And at
19:33
Speaker 1: the age of twelve, Howard Dully met Dr Freeman under
19:38
Speaker 1: unfortunate circumstances, meaning Dr Freeman had a couple of ice
19:41
Speaker 1: picks on him when they met, and um, Howard ended
19:45
Speaker 1: up under Freeman's care because of his stepmother, right, Chuck, Yeah,
19:50
Speaker 1: he It was the kind of the classic story the
19:52
Speaker 1: father gets remarried to a stepmother who is not very
19:55
Speaker 1: patient and understanding with her son. That sounded like you,
20:00
Speaker 1: It sound like he may have been a little ryanbunctious,
20:01
Speaker 1: but what twelve year old boy isn't. And I think
20:04
Speaker 1: you have some good notes, actual notes. Yeah, well in
20:07
Speaker 1: Freeman's notes that Dully turned up later, and we should say,
20:10
Speaker 1: how are Dully created this great radio piece that's an MPR.
20:14
Speaker 1: You can actually find um by typing in my lobotomy
20:17
Speaker 1: and Google. I think it's the first thing that comes up.
20:19
Speaker 1: It's one of the most amazing things you've ever heard,
20:22
Speaker 1: where he just goes and retraces the steps of his
20:25
Speaker 1: lobotomy that he got when he was twelve and tries
20:27
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of what happened. We typically
20:29
Speaker 1: don't recommend people go listen to other things that it's
20:33
Speaker 1: not us. But that's how good it is, right, yeah, exactly,
20:36
Speaker 1: it is that good. Uh, it's way better than I
20:38
Speaker 1: actually um. But he finds the Dr. Freeman's notes on
20:43
Speaker 1: his case and apparently a stepmother pled her case to
20:47
Speaker 1: get him lobotomized by pointing out that he day dreams
20:51
Speaker 1: a lot, and when you ask him what he's daydreaming about,
20:53
Speaker 1: he says, I don't know. Uh, he doesn't want to
20:57
Speaker 1: go to bed, and when he does he sleeps well.
21:00
Speaker 1: In my personal favorite, he turns on the lights in
21:03
Speaker 1: rooms when there's broad daylight streaming in unbelievable. I know
21:08
Speaker 1: that kid deserves the lobotomy, but one of the things
21:11
Speaker 1: that I think one of the reasons why you and
21:13
Speaker 1: I both look up to Howard Dolly was because he
21:17
Speaker 1: has wondered his whole life how different would he be?
21:22
Speaker 1: Like I lived hard and fast as a younger man,
21:25
Speaker 1: right right? Yeah, actually way way harder and faster. Um So,
21:33
Speaker 1: but I've I've often wondered, you know, how much sharper
21:36
Speaker 1: would I be had I not lived like that? But
21:39
Speaker 1: this is my own doing. It was my own choosing.
21:41
Speaker 1: Howard Dolly had to think that same thing, like is
21:44
Speaker 1: there something wrong with me? Is there a part of
21:45
Speaker 1: me missing? Through no choice or fault of his own?
21:49
Speaker 1: We should also say that, um, when Howard's stepmother found
21:52
Speaker 1: that he was not a vegetable, she just got him
21:55
Speaker 1: out of the house and he became a ward of
21:56
Speaker 1: the state. So he went all around lady so um
22:01
Speaker 1: again in the end he finds, you know, there there
22:05
Speaker 1: really isn't something wrong within the He's a pretty terrific
22:08
Speaker 1: person as as as it turned out, lobotomy or not.
22:11
Speaker 1: It took him a long time though, I mean he
22:12
Speaker 1: battled addiction and various forms of mental illness his whole
22:16
Speaker 1: life after this, and uh, I think going this the
22:20
Speaker 1: special that air and he wrote a book and went
22:22
Speaker 1: and talked to his father. After forty years. He actually
22:24
Speaker 1: finally spoke to his dad about it, and that seems
22:27
Speaker 1: to have been the thing to get him over the
22:29
Speaker 1: edge to not feeling like a freak anymore, as he
22:31
Speaker 1: called it. Yeah, you can actually hear him working it
22:34
Speaker 1: out in my lobotomy. Yeah, a big, deep voice. Yeah,
22:38
Speaker 1: he sounds kind of like Sam not Sam Shepherdson. What's
22:41
Speaker 1: the guy? Uh, big lebowski, Sam Elliott? Sam Elliott? Yeah,
22:47
Speaker 1: that's what are you reminded me of the dude. Yeah.
22:49
Speaker 1: He also had that big mustache too, sort of like
22:51
Speaker 1: Sam Ello, that handlebar biker mustache. So, Chuck, whatever happened
22:56
Speaker 1: to Lobotomy's why where? Why did they go the way
22:58
Speaker 1: of the dinosaur? Well? Uh, A couple of reasons. I mean, one,
23:03
Speaker 1: there was a lot of gaining steam with the criticism
23:07
Speaker 1: of it because they found that they were lobotomizing criminals.
23:12
Speaker 1: They were lobotomizing soldiers from World War Two because criminals
23:15
Speaker 1: against their will sometimes right, But they lobotomized soldiers because
23:19
Speaker 1: hospitals were overcrowded veterans unbelievable, and so that that was
23:24
Speaker 1: kind of gaining steam. And then the introduction of uh
23:29
Speaker 1: thorizine basically everything um I believe that somebody said that
23:35
Speaker 1: thorzine was to the treatment of schizophrenia, that insulin, I'm sorry,
23:41
Speaker 1: that penicillin was to the treatment of infectious diseases, which
23:46
Speaker 1: is a pretty big comparison. So thorzine was developed in
23:50
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty and as it began to to fall into
23:54
Speaker 1: widespread use, um lobotomy kind of fell out of widespread use.
24:00
Speaker 1: Dr Freeman himself he uh, he had one last one,
24:04
Speaker 1: one last lobotomy in nineteen sixty seven, right, yeah, he
24:06
Speaker 1: killed a woman with the brain hemorrhage after the third try.
24:10
Speaker 1: I think this is her third lobotomy, and uh, she
24:14
Speaker 1: wasn't just you know, some mental patient in Iowa. This
24:17
Speaker 1: is a housewife. And when she died of I believe
24:22
Speaker 1: of hemorrhage after the procedure, that third procedure, that was it.
24:26
Speaker 1: He was banned from surgery, performing any kind of surgery
24:30
Speaker 1: from that that point on, and actually spent the rest
24:33
Speaker 1: of his days until he died in nineteen seventy two,
24:36
Speaker 1: traveling the country in a camper. If it was his lobottomobile,
24:42
Speaker 1: I don't know. He wasn't pitching it. He was actually
24:44
Speaker 1: going around trying to um find he was visiting old
24:48
Speaker 1: patients to prove that he had done good. And he
24:52
Speaker 1: had done some good in a couple of cases, in
24:55
Speaker 1: several cases, I imagined. His first one was a woman
25:00
Speaker 1: I can't remember her first name, but it was ian
25:01
Speaker 1: Esco and she, uh, she was violently suicidal, as described
25:06
Speaker 1: by her daughter, and afterwards she went on to to
25:09
Speaker 1: live a happy, fulfilled life. Yeah. But you know, every
25:13
Speaker 1: every successful case I read about, they would say things
25:16
Speaker 1: like they weren't violently suicidal anymore, and they were just,
25:19
Speaker 1: you know, kind of happy, but it still seemed to
25:21
Speaker 1: be that lights wrong. But no one's home thing like
25:24
Speaker 1: the couple, Yeah, the married couple was the husband had
25:30
Speaker 1: his wife lo bottom eyes because she was so emotional
25:33
Speaker 1: and she was suicidal. Yeah, and she says that she's
25:37
Speaker 1: happy as a clam, and he was satisfied. He said
25:39
Speaker 1: that she came home and she never calls any more
25:42
Speaker 1: trouble and she was just happy and she could still yeah,
25:45
Speaker 1: she could still cook and clean and do all the
25:46
Speaker 1: things she could do before. And she agreed, I just
25:49
Speaker 1: haven't been worried about things since then. And she was
25:51
Speaker 1: in her eighties. But you know, you read that emotions
25:54
Speaker 1: are normal, mood swings are normal. It's h agreed, but
25:57
Speaker 1: I do I do think that there is a certain
25:59
Speaker 1: threshold and if you're violently suicidal, you know, maybe a
26:03
Speaker 1: lobotomy was a better option. Yeah, but I also want
26:06
Speaker 1: to know what the criteria for all this was. Back
26:08
Speaker 1: then there wasn't any so yeah, so put that in
26:11
Speaker 1: your pipe. And but one of the most unsettling things,
26:15
Speaker 1: one of the most unsettling things that I found from
26:18
Speaker 1: this article is that lobotomies are still performed today in England. Right,
26:23
Speaker 1: the UK is one of a few countries UM where
26:26
Speaker 1: it's it's no longer called the botomies because lobotomy is
26:29
Speaker 1: such a horrible stigma attached to it for good reason.
26:32
Speaker 1: Neurosurgery for a mental disorder and m D and today
26:36
Speaker 1: apparently they use m r s as guides to be
26:39
Speaker 1: more precise. But pretty much this type of surgery, psychosurgery
26:43
Speaker 1: as it's called UM is, it's pretty much the same thing.
26:48
Speaker 1: It's destroying white matter connections and you're removing people's emotional cells. Right.
26:53
Speaker 1: I mean, there may be something too to that, but
26:57
Speaker 1: certainly it was so non specific and non technical to
27:01
Speaker 1: jam Ice picks and and just blindly move them back
27:04
Speaker 1: and forth. Said, no, wonder that was all kinds of results. So, Chuck,
27:09
Speaker 1: we are both kind of nuts. And I'm really glad
27:12
Speaker 1: it's not like ninety. Yeah, my wife Emily and I
27:17
Speaker 1: would both be on the the lobotomy table. I think
27:20
Speaker 1: I drive you to see Freeman. Thanks, sure, I appreciate that. Yeah,
27:25
Speaker 1: well that's it. That's it for lobotomies, buddy. Yeah. I
27:28
Speaker 1: encourage people to go out and listen to Howard Dully's
27:30
Speaker 1: uh radio show there. It's really great. Hopefully you guys
27:35
Speaker 1: enjoyed this one. You can read all about lobotomies on
27:39
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. You know what to do, uh,
27:42
Speaker 1: you know, handy search bar, etcetera. Uh, And Chuck, let's
27:46
Speaker 1: u let's talk some audible stuff. So our sponsor, audible
27:50
Speaker 1: dot com hit it. Okay, So if everyone goes to www.
27:56
Speaker 1: Dot audible podcast dot com slash stuff and sign up
28:01
Speaker 1: to get one free download from audible dot COM's fifty
28:05
Speaker 1: thousand plus titles of audio books, stand up comedy, spoken
28:09
Speaker 1: word speeches, pretty much anything you can listen to is
28:13
Speaker 1: right there. And I was on their browsing just this
28:16
Speaker 1: morning and I found one of my all time favorite
28:19
Speaker 1: books by Charles man Good One great one man runs
28:24
Speaker 1: around um the America's basically two archaeological sites and gets
28:29
Speaker 1: the scoop on the most recent findings and finds that
28:33
Speaker 1: there were way more people in the America's before Columbus
28:37
Speaker 1: showed up than we realized. Uh and yeah, there's a
28:39
Speaker 1: lag between the arrival of Columbus uh to Hispaniola and
28:44
Speaker 1: the the second wave that followed within the next fifty years.
28:49
Speaker 1: The second wave found that this, you know, that was
28:51
Speaker 1: Virgin Territory. There's almost no one there. Turns out it's
28:54
Speaker 1: because about a hundred million people died of smallpox from
28:58
Speaker 1: Columbus's first arrival between then and the second wave. It's fascinating,
29:05
Speaker 1: right there. You just did one. Well, maybe we'll do
29:07
Speaker 1: a bigger subed on it, a bigger Yeah. What about
29:09
Speaker 1: you you've been on? Yeah, I'm gonna recommend uh just quickly.
29:12
Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Rapport. Oh, I saw his portrait,
29:16
Speaker 1: his National Gallery Portrait a Stithonia recently. It was awesome
29:20
Speaker 1: with this familiar scowl. Yeah. I love that guy. So yeah,
29:24
Speaker 1: he has a very popular book that he reads himself
29:27
Speaker 1: called I'm an American and so can you. And that's
29:30
Speaker 1: all I need to say about that. It's hysterical. Nice check.
29:33
Speaker 1: So you can get either one of those titles for
29:36
Speaker 1: free by going to www. Dot audible podcast dot com
29:41
Speaker 1: slash stuff and signing up and that is audible right there, Baby,
29:46
Speaker 1: let's do Let's do it, Josh. I'm just gonna call this.
29:51
Speaker 1: We got a lot of great feedback for the high
29:53
Speaker 1: Food toost Corn Serup. Yeah, so much so we're gonna
29:57
Speaker 1: have probably like three podcasts in a row. We're gonna
29:59
Speaker 1: be and some of that mail, I don't know what
30:01
Speaker 1: it is. We should I can bring back Haikus, all right.
30:06
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna call it intelligent listener mail because
30:09
Speaker 1: Max is a smart guy, and I like these most
30:11
Speaker 1: of all. I'm a graduating senior in the Business College,
30:14
Speaker 1: but when I'm not in class or listening to podcast,
30:17
Speaker 1: I almost always enjoy listening to philosophy. It's more or
30:21
Speaker 1: less my passion. More specifically, I'm interested in world religion,
30:24
Speaker 1: medical metaphysical theory, and man's relationship to nature in the universe.
30:29
Speaker 1: So this guy is obviously smarter than we are to
30:32
Speaker 1: say that fruit dose, corn serve, or any other man
30:35
Speaker 1: made chemical compound does not occur naturally. You're speaking with
30:38
Speaker 1: the basic assumption that man is something different than nature. Unfortunately,
30:42
Speaker 1: for those who can find themselves above nature and importance
30:45
Speaker 1: or authority, this is not the case. It's our Western
30:48
Speaker 1: culture and religion that strengthens this point of view. Man
30:51
Speaker 1: didn't PLoP into nature as a separate and flawed phenomenon
30:53
Speaker 1: in a stupid natural universe. Man came out of nature.
30:57
Speaker 1: Man is nature. Man is the universe. To borrow a
31:01
Speaker 1: quote from my favorite philosopher Alan Watts, and you're seeing,
31:05
Speaker 1: you're hearing, you're talking, you're thinking, you're moving. You express
31:09
Speaker 1: that which it is which moves the sun and other stars.
31:13
Speaker 1: So to perceive yourself as something different is only an
31:16
Speaker 1: inability to identify yourself with the cosmos. So Josh Man's
31:20
Speaker 1: manipulation of compounds is really the world's manipulation of itself,
31:24
Speaker 1: or perhaps the universe manipulating itself. And that is certainly
31:28
Speaker 1: a natural occurrence. Boom, And that is what happens when
31:32
Speaker 1: I off handedly say something is man made? Nice? Well,
31:36
Speaker 1: what's the guy's name? Max? And I think philosophy too,
31:39
Speaker 1: so I thought, what's gonna call? We dig you, Max,
31:41
Speaker 1: and we really dig anybody who sends us something, especially
31:44
Speaker 1: if it's as intelligent as that. Uh. If you want
31:47
Speaker 1: to show off your ginormous brain, send us an email
31:50
Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
31:57
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics at how
32:00
Speaker 1: staff works dot com. H brought to you by the
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