Get Well Soon

by Jennifer Wright

The work received a deluge of responses from interested and frightened readers. Good. Well done, Irving Wallace. Freeman hated this article. He wanted his name left out of it entirely and, in what I think is a hilariously petulant move, wrote Wallace a letter quoting from the poem “If—” by Rudyard Kipling: “If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken / Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools … Then you’ll be a Man, my son!” But he knew full well that patients could be rendered, among other things, conscienceless. In a 1945 letter to a medical colleague about a former patient of his he wrote: “Your description of her brings up a picture of a rather childish individual with many enthusiasms, with petulance and lofty intransigence but no real deep feelings of distress and certainly no conscience [emphasis added] … it will be well to see her as an over-sized child rather than as a responsible adult.”50

  There would be more artists who wrote about the damaging impact of lobotomies. Tennessee Williams’s beloved sister Rose was lobotomized in 1943, and references to the operation appear overtly in Suddenly, Last Summer (1958) and more subtly in The Glass Menagerie (1944). In Menagerie, after the Rose-esque character’s favorite ornament, a unicorn, is broken, she smiles and remarks, “I’ll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less—freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don’t have horns.” And then, of course, there is Ken Kesey’s 1962 book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which could well be subtitled Lobotomies Are Bad and So Is Conformity.

  I wish this was a case of “artists can change the world!” They can! They do! Keep doing art! However, while these depictions inspired the horror with which we regard lobotomies today, the major cause of lobotomies’ waning popularity was the introduction of Thorazine in 1955. This antipsychotic medication could effectively quiet and subdue some patients (like schizophrenics) without irreversible side effects. It was first marketed as a “chemical lobotomy.”

  None of this stopped Freeman, though. Throughout the 1960s he continued to operate—sometimes on children as young as age twelve. Howard Dully, who later recounted the experience in My Lobotomy, was operated upon in 1960 because his stepmother claimed: “He objects to going to bed but then sleeps well. He does a good deal of daydreaming and when asked about it he says, ‘I don’t know.’ He turns the room’s lights on when there is broad sunlight outside.”51 Turning the lights on during daytime is (1) not all that bad a behavior and (2) something that could likely be changed by saying, “Hey, stop turning all the lights on when it’s bright outside, kid; you’re going to get grounded if you keep killing us with this electricity bill.”

  Freeman’s license was finally revoked in 1967 when a patient in his care died as Freeman performed his third lobotomy on her. As late as 1968 he claimed that he thought lobotomies would make a comeback and that surgeons who were disinclined to perform them were “missing a good bet.”52 That same year he began what he called “the great manhunt of 1968.” Before his death in 1972 from cancer, Freeman traveled across the country visiting with his former patients. Many were pleased to see him, and his attitude toward them remained paternal, as if they were indeed little children. If they appeared so, it was, of course, likely his doing.

  Their relatives were less delighted. Rebecca Welch, whose mother had been operated on in 1953 for postpartum depression, claimed, “I personally think that something in Dr. Freeman wanted to be able to conquer people and take away who they were.”53 Whether or not he had these sinister intentions, this was one of the darkest chapters in American medical history. It’s one that we look back on with a good deal of shame. Part of the blame lies with a midcentury zeal for conformity. People were willing to sacrifice whole personalities to make those who seemed different and unusual more like everyone else. Some who turned to lobotomies desperately yearned for a cure for their ailments; others were suffering from nothing more than human frailty. We seemed to forget that if you go around cutting up the brains of everyone who isn’t “normal,” by the time you are finished there will be no one left. A charismatic demagogue was elevated and trusted because he was captivating and because researching facts, as well as listening to dull doctors who have done their homework, is hard and time-consuming.

  We really need to avoid behaving that way, in general.

  But look, there is one thing about lobotomies—and it’s the only thing, really—that makes me take heart. It’s that everyone I have ever met is terrified of them. Maybe that’s because of their gruesome artistic portrayals or any number of dark jokes about the procedure. Still, the fact that people now respond to the idea of being “happy but vacant” with such a primal level of horror makes me respect my fellow man.

  There’s a story called “Zombies” by Chuck Palahniuk. It’s possibly the most Palahniuk tale ever written (readers of his work will understand). It features teenagers inflicting lobotomies on themselves. They do it so they don’t have “to keep track of all three hundred Kardashian sisters and eight hundred Baldwin brothers” and can instead “be thrilled with penny candy and reruns of Fraggle Rock.” So Chuck Palahniuk clearly has no idea in what year this story is taking place.

  (The only Baldwins I can name are Ireland and Alec. That’s a lie. I can name all of the Baldwins, but my head is truly a bottomless pit of useless trivia.)

  No one I have ever passed this story on to has ever liked it. People have informed me that it’s “scary,” “horrifying,” “awful, Jesus, why did you send this to me?” and, in one case, “Do you know how much DVDs of Fraggle Rock COST?” (A lot, apparently!) No one has ever read this story and said, “Jen, I think those teenagers had the right idea.”

  People don’t seem to regard giving up their higher reasoning for a life of untroubled bliss as a good trade. If you want to read more into that statement, you could probably say this implies something great about humanity. Perhaps we prioritize a life of meaning over one of simple happiness. You can be happy by basically obeying all your impulses and fondling your genitals and not worrying about anything—which seems to describe the “happiness cult” that Becky and countless other less enthusiastic patients seemed to have joined. But if you want to have a meaningful life, where you take care of others, and maybe leave the world a tiny bit better than it was when you came into it, you’re going to need your frontal lobes.

  Laugh your cares away / Worries for another day!

  Polio

  I don’t think there is any

  philosophy that suggests having

  polio is a good thing.

  —BILL GATES

  Every so often, everyone does everything right, and humanity triumphs. The story of how we vanquished polio isn’t just about Jonas Salk, although he will be remembered as a man who fought valiantly against a terrible disease. It is also an account of the greatness of people when they come together and work as a team to eradicate a true foe. In this case, we all battled polio like soldiers. Many people in this tale are so great and brave that you are going to want to kiss all of America-circa-1956 or give it a gruff but meaningful handshake, whichever is your preference.

  The polio story is my favorite in this book.

  It begins with a disease that had been terrorizing North America for fifty years. In the terrific Polio: An American Story, the author David M. Oshinsky explains that during the 1940s, “no disease drew as much attention, or struck the same terror, as polio. And for good reason. Polio hit without warning. There was no way of telling who would get it and who would be spared. It killed some of its victims and marked others for life, leaving behind vivid reminders for all to see: wheelchairs, crutches, leg braces, breathing devices, deformed limbs.”1 And it was common. Polio affected tens of thousands of Americans. After first appearing in the United States in the late 1890s, in 1916 there were 27,000 reported cases. The disease became an ever-present threat. In 1949 there were 40,000 cases of polio in the United States. By 1952 there were 57,879.2 A 1952 national poll “What Americans Most Feared” listed polio as
second, after the atomic bomb.3 One reason the disease was so terrifying was that it mainly affected children under the age of five, sometimes rendering them paralyzed for life.4

  Polio works in ways that, at first glance, seem similar to cholera. Like cholera, the virus, which is found in feces, enters through the mouth and is ingested. So, once again, it can be transmitted by unclean water. Now, you might say, “Wait. People in twentieth-century America had cesspools in their basement and were drinking unfiltered water?” Well, no. I suppose maybe some people did, but not many. The real concern was children playing in lakes, water holes, and swimming pools that at that time still used a somewhat antiquated filtration system. (Chlorine, which inactivates the polio virus, wouldn’t be introduced in pools until 1946.)5 Ingesting contaminated water from those sources could give you polio. Accordingly, the summer months were peak polio season; many parents were afraid to let their children go anywhere near a pool for fear they might contract the disease. Polio is one reason that the idea of someone pooping in a pool is so horrifying, in addition to just being very uncool. And the nitrogen in urine converts chlorine in such a way that it irritates the eyes, so stop peeing in pools, too. The latter has nothing to do with polio; just stop doing gross things in the pool because you’re ruining it for everyone.

  I was curious whether the reason pools were segregated at that time had to do with an insane notion that black people were more likely to carry the polio virus, but that’s not the case. In fact there was a senseless stereotype at the time that black people could not get polio. (They can.) Pools were segregated for different ludicrous racist reasons that had nothing to do with disease.

  In addition to swimming, someone could get polio if an infected person failed to wash their hands after going to the bathroom or changing a baby’s diaper, and then prepared food. Once ingested, the virus made its way down the digestive tract and began breeding in the small intestine. From there it had the potential to attack the brain stem and central nervous system, where it could destroy nerve cells that regulate muscle control. In about one in two hundred cases, such as that of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), paralysis resulted after the nerve cells were destroyed. The paralysis generally affected the legs. That’s why we associate the disease with wheelchairs and leg braces. In some cases, with rehabilitative work, those people regained some abilities. However, in about two-thirds of cases sufferers were left with permanent muscle weakness.6 Except for the 1994 movie hero Forrest Gump, no children in leg braces were ever magically able to run again because bullies were tormenting them or because they were in love with Robin Wright’s character or because of divine intervention.

  In more terrifying cases, known as bulbar polio, the brain stem is damaged, and the breathing muscles are affected. In the 1940s those sufferers would often be put in massive “iron lungs.” People would be fully inserted into the tubelike contraptions, with their head left outside. These “lungs” attempted to regulate breathing by forcing air in and out of the lungs until the patients were able to breathe by themselves again. That rehabilitation could take weeks.7 The idea of hanging out in an iron lung for even a few minutes is enough to make me feel shaky with claustrophobia, and I am certain you are not able to read in them. Oh, does that seem like a minor concern? See how it seems after being trapped in a coffinlike tube with nothing to do for weeks.

  The idea of dying is also not appealing—polio was fatal in 5 to 10 percent of paralytic polio cases.

  So that is the enemy people were fighting. Now let’s turn to the victors.

  The first hero of this story is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The thirty-second president of the United States had been paralyzed by polio in 1921, at the age of thirty-nine, which may surprise those who think of polio as a childhood illness. While Roosevelt would dream of walking again, he was never able to do so for more than short distances, and then only with the use of braces on both his legs. Once he became president in 1933, he also became associated with the illness. In this regard, his heroism was kind of thrust upon him because he absolutely did not want to be thought of as someone who had been paralyzed. You will almost never see pictures of FDR in the wheelchair he used privately. Meanwhile, if you watch recordings of him giving speeches, you will see that he bobs his head around so much that, frankly, it seems funny by today’s standards. That wasn’t a tic or a weird fashion of the 1930s. It was Roosevelt’s attempt to give an impression of physical vitality. His efforts are understandable as, during his campaign, articles in magazines like Time claimed, “This candidate, while mentally qualified for the presidency, is utterly unfit physically.”8 As if the main duty of the U.S. president is to run a daily marathon. Still, there were many people, especially during the Depression, who believed that paralysis was a kind of moral failing and that “the world has no place for a cripple.”9

  Well, too bad, FDR, your efforts at minimizing the effects of your disease failed, and you ended up a hero to thousands of people affected by polio.

  Once FDR was elected, the unfortunately widespread perception of polio victims as a drain on society began to change. Hundreds of polio survivors and parents of children with polio wrote to him. Some families told him how they had lost their life savings trying to secure appropriate medical treatment for their children. Crippled children told him how they were bullied at school because, for instance, they couldn’t play baseball. He wrote back to everyone, encouraging them, telling them that they were engaged in a “brave fight,” and complimenting their “fine courage and determination.”10 Some people (namely the otherwise brilliant David M. Oshinsky) say that FDR’s replies were kind of glib, but you know what? He was the president of the United States, and he took time to sit down and reach out to people who were troubled. That’s amazing. The kindness of people in this troubled, sickly world is beautiful.

  One letter from a mother whose son had been paralyzed read: “Every time I hear your voice on the radio and read about your attitude toward physical handicaps—that they don’t amount to a ‘hill of beans’—I am strengthened and my courage is renewed. Your life is, in a way, an answer to my prayers.”11

  FDR supported a number of charities that helped polio survivors. He created the Warm Springs Foundation to benefit the Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation. Roosevelt had bought an estate and the surrounding twelve hundred acres in Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1926 and turned it into a veritable paradise for those suffering the aftereffects of polio. The Institute offered accessible buildings for those with disabilities and allowed them to bathe in therapeutic waters. It might seem surprising that the waters were such a huge draw, given polio’s method of contagion, but for those with severely weakened muscles, swimming proved a great form of exercise. Roosevelt had stayed at Warm Springs shortly after he first contracted polio and continued to visit regularly for the rest of his life. Polio victims found it was more than simply a place to rehabilitate; it was a place where the participants could remember that they were no less human than everyone else. That was a challenge in an era when, as the disability rights activist Irving Zola noted, many felt they were “de-formed, dis-eased, dis-abled, dis-ordered, ab-normal, and, most telling of all … in-valid.”12 Suicide was ranked the fifth-likeliest cause of death among polio victims (compared to around tenth for most Americans).13 That’s not surprising if you felt your life’s prospects had been suddenly ripped away. Many adults with the disease would have to return to their childhood homes to be cared for.

  Hugh Gallagher, who had contracted polio and been paralyzed during his first semester at college in 1952, was devastated by the knowledge he might never walk again. He initially had no interest in visiting Warm Springs, remarking that he did not wish “to associate with cripples.”14 He got over that, and later claimed: “Warm Springs provided an opportunity to meet people, undertake joint activities, make friends, date, fall in love. The whole range of normal social activities went on at Warm Springs, much the way it did at the rest of the world … Warm Springs was
the best thing ever to happen to me.”15

  If Roosevelt had done nothing to help fight polio except buy and raise funds for Warm Springs, he’d have been a hero. But there’s more! During his presidency, when funds for the institute seemed depleted, Roosevelt gave permission for presidential “Birthday Balls” to be held in his name on his birthday. A percentage of all ticket sales went to Warm Springs and, later, to other causes that assisted the fight against polio. The first ball was held in 1934. The publicist Carl Byoir organized the event by sending notes to newspaper editors in cities across the United States asking them to find a civic leader who would help organize a ball. Society ladies loved that stuff. Really, anyone would. If your town’s newspaper reached out to you and said that the president hoped you would organize a party to help paralyzed children, you’d do it. You would probably head the committee. We would order some fancy pizzas and champagne and some of those minicupcakes everybody likes. It would be great. What a good reason to have a party! Americans agreed. Six thousand Birthday Balls were held across the United States in 1934, with the slogan “We dance so that others might walk.”16 Communities attempted to outdo one another. There was a twenty-eight-foot cake and a flock of debutantes at the ball held at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, but for my money the best one was hosted at Warm Springs. There the residents danced in their wheelchairs before cutting a seven-foot cake. President Roosevelt said afterward, “It was the happiest birthday I have ever known.”17

  While the balls continued until 1940, they didn’t necessarily appeal to Republicans or, I suppose, people who do not like oversized cakes. “I am willing to contribute to the [polio campaign] on any day but Roosevelt’s birthday”18 became a common response from his political opponents, which would have been acceptable had they ever gotten around to donating the other 364 days of the year. So in 1938 Roosevelt established a nonpartisan group called the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP). Its aim was to fund promising research as well as provide the best treatment available for those afflicted by the disease. Before polio was cured, approximately two-thirds of Americans donated to the NFIP’s March of Dimes fund-raiser, and 7 million volunteered on behalf of the foundation. That is a shocking number. That’s more Americans than have volunteered for any cause that isn’t related to a war.19