Claire PrenticeRecensioni

An interesting read, raising the question of the lines between entertainment and education

Dr. Walter Freeman was a neurologist, and the man who invented the transorbital lobotomy, performed with surgical picks and a medical hammer. The picks looked like ice picks.

It's not the equipment used, of course, that makes the procedure horrific.

This is a short audiobook, about two hours, but it packs a punch. Freeman began actively, even aggressively, promoting and performing lobotomies in the 1950s in the overcrowded, underfunded mental hospitals of West Virginia.

The hospitals were seriously underfunded, and West Virginia was a poor state, and conditions in the hospitals were horrific. Psychiatric drugs weren't available yet, or rather, were just in the early stages of being developed. But even once they became available, they take time to work.

The transorbital lobotomy was a ten-minute procedure that had immediate efflect.

Initially, the lobotomies were being performed mostly on violent, difficult to control patients, and many of them were "improved" by the lobotomy. About one third, and that's Freeman's own estimate, not an independent estimate, were well enough to go home.

While some did well when they returned home after lobotomies, others became passive, lost all initiative, had difficulty with simple tasks. Some became unable to even take basic care of themselves--needing to be fed, cleaned, and helped to toilet.

Some died of the procedure, because the smallest slip could cause far more brain damage than intended.

It was disproportionately performed on women, minorities, and the poor. The list of conditions for which Freeman eagerly recommended it kept growing, and minor anxiety in women, or teenage defiance of parents, were included.

Freeman was a showman, who liked to be watched performing, courted the media, and never acknowledged the damage his beloved procedure did to so many of his patients. Opposition to lobotomy grew in the medical community throughout the 1950s, as the consequences became clear and the first effective psychiatric drugs became available, but Freeman kept promoting lobotomy, and performing lobotomies, until 1967, when a long-term patient on whom he had performed two previous lobotomies, died following a third.

This is truly a horrifying story. I'm old enough that I'd heard a good bit of this before, but this book is a fuller story than what I knew, and quite shocking.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

I enjoy reading medical stories and mysteries but I didn't know when I borrowed this book it would end up being a horror story. It is the true story of Dr Walter Freeman, the Dr Icepick of the title. He was convinced that transorbital lobotomies were the answer to mental illness and the overcrowding of state mental institutions. This hit especially close to home as I am from WV, where his Operation Icepick got its start. This program got its name from the tool used in the procedure which resembled a long-handled icepick driven into the brain in the eye socket. WV state officials bought Dr Freeman's story and authorized the program which caused much grief to thousands of families over the years before such lobotomies fell from grace with the development of Thorazine and other psychiatric drugs. Better living through chemistry indeed! The author worked at the University of Virginia, which also used the program. The book is extensively researched through studying available records and newspaper articles as well as talking to employees, patients, and families involved. This was a case where politics, medical orthodoxy, and unquestioning newspapers got behind a jealous flawed man and an unproven and relatively untested medical procedure. Could this happen again? One might look to the current opioid crisis, FDA approval and the powerful Sackler family's Oxycontin to realize it certainly could.

Doctor Ice Pick. Claire Prentice. (Amazon Original Stories) 2022. Well this was a surprise: I saw the title and thought this book was a gruesome serial murder mystery. It was gruesome, and unfortunately, a true account of the medical career of Dr. Walter Freeman, who perfected the hideous medical practice of performing a prefrontal lobotomy to “cure” mentally ill patients. While most of the medical world felt like the procedure that should only used when all other methods failed. Freeman insisted it was the answer to mental illness and could save thousands and thousands of dollars in the treatment of mental illness. He continued to do the lobotomies for as long as he could and ignored all the evidence that the procedure was barbaric and not effective. With the advent of new drugs the procedure is no longer used, but it is estimated that around 50 thousand lobotomies were performed in America, and the procedure has never been outlawed. Rosemary Kennedy, a sister of President Kennedy, was probably the most famous “victim” of this procedure. Scary and devastating.

A Human Plague
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook edition (May 31, 2022)

I had previously run across the story of Walter Freeman (1895-1972) and his American lobotomy crusade when it was an odd chapter in Jennifer Wright's pre-COVID Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them (2017) i.e. a human induced disabling doesn't seem to count as a plague in the conventional sense.

Having the story expanded to novella length in Doctor Ice Pick just makes it all the more shocking that a barbaric procedure such as lobotomy (where the frontal lobe of the brain is severed from the rest in order to induce passivity in the patient) was ever a common medical practice. That this was done with instruments as crude as ice picks and hammers through the sides of the head or through the tops of the eye sockets is even more disturbing. That it was disproportionately used on women makes it infuriating.

That Freeman turned this into a sort of performance art with bizarre displays such as speed lobotomies, two-at-a-time lobotomies, his lobotomobile etc. just makes it even more grotesque and disgusting. Thankfully the invention of anti-psychotic drugs such as Chlorpromazine in the 1950s gradually led to lobotomization being phased out.

Author Claire Prentice seems to have done a very thorough research job here with 20% of the Kindle eBook being her citing of references. I did note that there was a dissenting review about the extent of the research.

Trivia and Links
See author Claire Prentice's website for further background here.

Ever since I saw a segment about this on Mysteries at the Museum, I’ve been intrigued by the story of the incubator babies at Coney Island.

This book is a great introduction to the story of the babies and the man who created the show to help thousands of babies. This books covers more than 50 years of the trials and successes Martin Couney had while trying to convince the world that premature babies were worth saving.

Highlights of the book include biographical history of Couney, the strict conditions he enforced and the detail of the operations for each of his exhibitions and stories of the folks who supported and worked for Couney. Surprises were how long and how far reaching Couney’s exhibitions of the baby incubators were. I also really liked the interviews with some of the babies who survived because of being placed into the care of Couney and his team.

I found this book through Amazon Prime Reading and read it quickly because it was hard to put down as this story had always intrigued me.

Another great Kindle single, Miracle at Coney Island: How a Sideshow Doctor Saved Thousands of Babies and Transformed American Medicine takes a look at the true story of the "incubator doctor," Martin Couney.

Claire Prentice investigates the "incubator doctor" that setup infant incubators across America and in London from 1903 to 1943. Martin Couney's techniques and incubators were far ahead of his time and were responsible for saving thousands of premature infants and changing how the medical field viewed premature infants.

His educational background and professional references were, unfortunately, not what they appeared to be.

Under Literary Construction: Miracle at Coney Island

This Kindle Single tells the fascinating story of Martin A. Couney (1870-1950), a German physician who trained under the noted French obstetrician Pierre-Constant Budin, one of the pioneers of perinatal medicine, the care of newborns. Budin succeeded Étienne Stéphane Tarnier as chief of the obstetrics department at the Hôpital Maternité in Paris in 1895, and he inherited the first infant incubators that were invented by Tarnier 15 years earlier to keep premature babies warm until they had enough body fat and were mature enough to regulate their body temperatures. The following year Budin sent Courney, his protégé (who was then Martin Cohen), along with six infant incubators, to Berlin, to demonstrate the use of these devices at the city's Industrial Exposition. The Kinderbrutanstalt (child hatchery) in Berlin consisted of accommodations for the nurses and physicians, a nursery, and the incubator room, in which visitors could view the "miracle babies", who generally weighed from 1200-2000 grams (2.6-4.4 lb), in the incubators, where they were kept until they reached a weight of at least six pounds (2.7 kg). The preemies in their metal and glass homes were visible to the public, but were separated from them by a guard rail and the medical staff, who were on hand to watch over the babies, and educate the public about them.

The Kinderbrutanstalt was a huge success, as this new technology and the very favorable outcomes of the preemies housed in incubators captured the attention of the public and the medical community, although the open display of these tiny babies outside of a hospital setting was met with disdain and distrust by many physicians. Cohen and an entrepreneurial friend of his decided to take their "act" to the Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl's Court in London in 1897, which was an even bigger success than Berlin was. In 1898 Cohen made his first trip to the United States, with a display of his incubators at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha, which was followed by his participation in the World's Fairs in Paris in 1900 and Buffalo in 1901.

Cohen, who by this time had changed his name to Courney, finally settled down by moving to New York City, and with the support and blessing of another entrepreneurial friend, Fred Thompson, Couney opened an exhibition at the newly built Luna Park on Coney Island, where he was to remain for the next 40 years.

Although he was quite the showman and occasionally crossed paths with politicians and public health officials who were concerned about the health and safety of the "Boardwalk Babes", Couney maintained strict hygiene and discipline amongst his medical colleagues, and as a result of his excellent knowledge and top notch staff approximately 6500 babies who may have otherwise died were saved under his watchful eye, with a low overall mortality rate.

Claire Prentice has done an excellent job in her description of the history of the incubator babies and their benefactor, Martin Couney. In addition, her thorough research about the man provides some interesting insight into the man, and raises some interesting questions about his background. Miracle at Coney Island is a valuable addition to the history of medicine, and at 95 pages it's a quick and very enjoyable read.

The Lost Tribe of Coney Island by Claire Prentice is a very highly recommended nonfiction account of Truman K. Hunt's use and abuse of a tribe of Filipinos, specifically Igorrotes, who were brought to America in 1905 and put on display at Coney Island’s Luna Park. As Prentice points out, "Ultimately, this is a story of a hero turned villain that makes us question who is civilized and who is savage."

Although in the end only Hunt and the fifty-one Filipinos who traveled with him to America knew the precise details of everything that transpired between them, it is safe to say after reading Prentice's remarkable account that the Igorrotes were degraded and essentially became slaves to Hunt's greed. The fact that Hunt brought human beings from another culture to America and then was allowed to put them on display was in and of itself nauseating. Adding insult to injury was the fact that he stole and cheated them out of the compensation he said he would be providing to them.

"Savage or innocent, noble or childlike. The Igorrotes were like one of the distorting mirrors at the Coney funfair. How they were portrayed reflected the views of those looking at them more often than it gave a true picture of the Igorrotes themselves." ( Location 1653) Hunt insisted that they kill and eat a dog daily for the "show" even though dog was not a main staple of their diets.

"The sacrifice of a dog was an important Igorrote custom and, though they were reluctant to say anything at first, some of the tribe felt the daily dog feasts at Coney were undermining their cultural significance. Not only that, but their bodies couldn’t digest all of the meat that they were being given. On behalf of them all, the tribal chief approached Julio [the interpreter] with a request that they be allowed to return to a more varied and authentic diet of chicken, pork, fish, rice, beans, and vegetables, with occasional servings of dog." (Location 1257) This authentic portrayal of their diet, of course, would ruin the show Hunt wanted to put on and profited greatly from.

It was really an embarrassment that the Human Society kept turning up to investigate complaints about the treatment of animals in the context of the Igorrotes. Here was a group of people who were brought to America, being taken advantage of, being treated like animals, and "living in squalor and being forced to put on a degrading show for the public and the only complaint this party had was about the treatment of the dog." It was disgusting that no one stopped Hunt and ended the abuse of human beings, let alone animals.

Prentice does an excellent job presenting the results of years of research and telling the story of this disgraceful side show spectacle. It is much to her credit that in The Lost Tribe of Coney Island all the information she uncovers is disclosed in a sympathetic and informative narrative that is nicely paced. It certainly held my attention right to the end, although it did have me shaking my head over what people will do to others. While this is a difficult book to read in terms of subject matter, it is a well-researched account that is presented in a very accessible format and should appeal to a wide variety of readers.

Prentice includes any additional information she has uncovered about the people involved in an Afterword. The book also includes: Acknowledgments, Notes, a Bibliography, Illustration Credits, and an Index.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for review purposes.

While a fascinating story about the intersection of the rise of American power in the international arena with the popular culture of the day, I'm going to admit that I'm a little put off by the author's tendency to recreate dramatic events that I doubt she can really document; Prentice might have been better served by writing a historical novel. That said, the story of how Truman Hunt allowed himself to be corrupted by being the impresario of his troop of Filipino tribesmen is quite the demonstration of how one can never underestimate how low you can fall.½

Exhibition and exploitation

"The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century" by Claire Prentice (HMH New Harvest, $26).

The freak-show appetite of the late 19th and early 20th century American cannot be underestimated, and Claire Prentice dives into a little-known episode of sideshow hawking that involved the exhibition of some members of the Igorrote people of the Philippines, brought here following the Spanish-American War.

In "The Lost Tribe of Coney Island," Prentice tells the story of the promoter, a hard-drinking bigamist named Truman Hunt, who brought the Igorrote to the U.S., ostensibly as a cultural and educational exhibit. Instead, they were underfed and not paid as they practiced their spear arts for the amusement of gawkers who wanted to see real headhunters.

Prentice weaves a nice narrative, including side trips into discussions of Hunt’s wives, sideshow hucksters and greedy lawyers. Why, yes, since it’s America, the whole thing ended up in lawsuits.

A fascinating popular history, in "The Lost Tribe of Coney Island" it quickly becomes apparent that the so-called “primitives” were the most civilized people in the bunch.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com

It's really hard when reading a book about an earlier time period, not to impose our modern feelings on any aspect that we find distasteful or inhuman. But while we cannot change our own feelings, we must try to read the book without too much judgment. That is indeed very difficult to do when reading Claire Prentice's impeccably researched non-fiction tale, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island, about a tribe of Filipino people brought to the US and exhibited like zoo animals at Coney Island and across the country, a group of people who were treated appallingly badly, were lied to, were stolen from, were dismissed as ignorant savages, and to top it all off, were then failed egregiously in the American judicial system.

In 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair, a tribe from the Philippines called the Igorrotes were a wildly popular part of the exhibitions. In light of this, a former army officer who had spent time in the Philippines doctoring to the tribe and who had been a part of the group that brought the Bontoc Igorrotes to this country for the World's Fair, decided that he wanted to bring another group to the US to exhibit them around the country in a commercial venture. The US government agreed to his initial plan, giving him the right and responsibility for the well-being of the people.

Truman Hunt was initially benevolent and caring and the tribe members felt as if he was their friend. He personally chose the 51 members of the tribe who would be allowed to accompany him to the US, promising them monthly pay and the proceeds from any souvenir sales they made in return for a year in the US. People flocked to him to be considered. Once he had assembled the group, they made their way to the coast and embarked for a long and ultimately horrific experience in the US. When they arrived, Hunt made a token effort to display the group in an educational manner as he had promised the US government he would but quickly backed out of that agreement and headed to Coney Island to Luna Park where the Igorrotes became the biggest, most profitable exhibit of the season. Billed as head-hunting, dog-eating savages, the Igorrotes settled into the boring mundanity of a life purporting to be faithful to their life at home but in actual fact without any real purpose. Right from the start, their usual way of life was sensationalized and exaggerated in order to draw people in and increase ticket sales. The Igorrotes wore very little clothing in comparison to the Americans gawking at them. They sported tattoos inked after taking an enemy's head, and they celebrated major events with a dog feast. In America, they existed mainly to be looked at and to eat dog at every opportunity, something that tribe members would tell the interpreter was disrespectful of their actual culture but which would not be remedied.

Hunt quickly changed from a considerate guardian of the people to an avaricious huckster, seeding the newspapers with false stories about the tribe, creating things out of whole cloth, and treating the Igorrotes as ignorant side show exhibits rather than as human beings. If that wasn't enough, Hunt became even more greedy and brutal, forcibly stealing the money that the Igorrotes had hidden from him as their trust for him deteriorated and compelling them to live in appalling conditions. Personally Hunt was in trouble as well, being charged with bigamy, a charge he evaded, and then tracked by the government, which had finally woken up to Hunt's abuse and misuse of the Igorrotes, a potentially charged political situation.

The treatment these people endured at Hunt's hands is atrocious. That the media aided and abetted Hunt by printing his assertions and tall tales without bothering to check into even one of them is reprehensible and the height of yellow journalism. That the judicial system valued fraternal connections over the truth is completely and indefensibly shameful. Prentice's careful and extensive research brings this forgotten chapter of our history to vivid and disturbing life. She tells the story as if it was fictional, allowing herself to discuss what the people involved were thinking or feeling at each stage and while this is often supported by quotes from the individuals in question, sometimes she goes just over the line in trying to develop a person's character. She has easily shown Hunt as the con man he was and the devious ways he found to exploit the Igorrotes for his own profit. The Igorrotes, though, remain much more mysterious as individuals, perhaps because so few of them spoke English and so there's little reliable record of their feelings on their experiences beyond the court records in the end. Prentice does offer as much information as she could uncover to tell readers what happened to many of the major players in the story and that is much appreciated. The tale as a whole speaks to our fascination, a fascination that unfortunately continues to this day, with "otherness" and to the way that we are nowhere near as civilized, caring, and compassionate as might be hoped.½

I chose to read this book because the St. Louis connection caught my eye immediately when this book came up as part of the book tour. I didn’t know the name of the Phlippine tribe (Igorrotes), but I did know that they appeared at the 1904 World Fair in St. Louis, and that a neighborhood on the former Fair site is known as ‘Dogtown’. Legend is that the tribe that took up residence there during the Fair ate dogs. Stories have been told about the tribe stealing pets and eating them; something I now suspect was exaggerated after reading this book!

Throughout much of the book, I took breaks to wonder. This all took place only a little over 100 years ago, and I kept realizing how much things have changed! The very idea of putting humans ‘on display’ as if they were in a zoo is so off-putting to us today, and yet, in some ways I can understand why it happened. People did not have the ability to travel to distant parts of the world, and one could not simply google ‘Igarrote’ to learn about their culture, so this was a way to let the common many learn about them. Coupled with the fact that they were, at least at the beginning, willing participants, you can ALMOST excuse this as actors in a perfomance. ALMOST! But that was BEFORE I learned that they were cheated out of their salary and basically held prisoner by Dr. Hunt!

The other thing that forced me to keep reminding myself that this was a century ago was the actual chase for Dr. Hunt. It seemed almost unbelievable that he wasn’t tracked down almost immediately. He took ‘his’ tribe and scurried from town to town, always avoiding the authorities. Of course now, someone would take a selfie with one of the Igorrotes and post to Facebook and the authorities would know immediately where to go to arrest Dr. Hunt. But news traveled much more slowly at the turn of the last century.

I have to admit that until I read this book, I didn’t know much about Coney Island or the ‘amusement park’ industry of the early 1900s. I am lucky enough to live in a library district that offers e-borrowing of videos and found one about Coney Island. It really didn’t tell much at all about the Igorrote tribe; I think it was literally one sentence. But I’m glad I watched it first because it gave me a little background into the competition between the amusement park owners of the day, and let me see some of the building and attractions, and gave me some insight into why exhibits of humans might be seen as acceptable in those days! If you live in a district that offers Hoopla service, be sure to check this video out!

American Experience: Coney Island

This story was engrossing and kept my attention! There were so many characters, and at the beginning I kept confusing them, but it didn’t take long at all to get to know their personalities and keep them straight. The book is well-researched, with plenty of historical detail, and an entertaining read! If you enjoy history and learning about the attitudes of the early twentieth century, be sure to pick this one up!

This review originally appeared on my blog, Time 2 Read, included in a tour by TLC Book Tours. I was provided a copy for review purposes and have written an honest review which appears above.½

Absolutely fascinating history of the Igorrotes. A family brought from the Phillipines to star at Coney Island, NYC in the early 1900's. They were used as freaks in the side show. Amazing history that I had never heard of before. There is no end to the greed of mankind. A great read. Get it.