Claire Prentice > Quotes

“Treatments for psychiatric disorders were crude and ineffective.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“Freeman and Watts used women as their guinea pigs at a time when docility and compliance—both common outcomes of lobotomy—were upheld as feminine virtues. Of their first twenty patients, seventeen were female. This bias would continue for decades, with doctors across the country and internationally lobotomizing women disproportionately, at a rate estimated variously to be between 60 and 84 percent,16 even though men slightly outnumbered women as patients in America’s psychiatric hospitals.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“Puc Aa-Un [sic], one of the biggest chiefs of the Igorrote tribes on the Island of Luzon, died here of heart disease yesterday at the winter quarters of the band of Igorrotes which were brought here by Dr. TK Hunt a year ago,” reported the Fort Wayne News,”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“Without a break, Freeman lobotomized eighteen men, women, and children that afternoon, one after another, photographing them first and then cutting into their brains with breezy efficiency. His youngest patient was thirteen years old.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“But in time, it became clear that the procedure was being carried out disproportionately on the poor, who made up the majority of state hospital patients, and on women, not just by Freeman but by doctors across the country.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“pecuniary advantage, demoralization and dishonesty”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“Operation Ice Pick, when political power, medical orthodoxy, and an unquestioning press aligned behind a flawed man with a zealous belief in a dangerous and unproven medical procedure, should be remembered as a terrible parable of misplaced certainty and lax oversight.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“The operation had disastrous results. Rosemary could no longer look after herself. She was incontinent; her speech was slurred, and she walked with a limp. One of the nurses who witnessed the procedure was so horrified by what she saw that she left the medical profession. Rosemary would be dependent on caregivers for the rest of her life.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“hospitals,”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“Not all the operations would go as planned. Four patients would die, two of them on the operating table,9 and some would be left incontinent or unable to walk or talk coherently.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“There is nothing edifying or educational enough in these exhibitions to atone for their evil effects upon the poor savages who are supposed to be the nation’s wards, not its playthings.”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“The Soviet Union banned the procedure in 1950 on the basis that it was “contrary to the principles of humanity.”73 Germany and Japan followed.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“They had journeyed halfway across the world, and had rattled across eleven US states, through wide-open plains and busy railroad junctions. They had grown accustomed to new sights and sounds but nothing could have prepared them for their arrival in America’s greatest city.”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“It was even being used to treat drug addiction and was touted as a “cure” for homosexuality.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“We were carried for many days in houses that went on wheels and flew along like birds. And now it seemed as if the land would never end. We must have come nearly a hundred days’ journey in a week.”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“Freeman no longer needed Watts to guarantee his success. He had plans to revolutionize care for patients around the country.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“Recht was destined to become his tireless assistant, sounding board, and guarantor of Cohen’s legitimacy.”
― Claire Prentice, Miracle at Coney Island: How a Sideshow Doctor Saved Thousands of Babies and Transformed American Medicine

“One-third of his patients, possibly more, would soon be well enough to leave the asylum and return to their families. Punching the air, he shouted what had by now become his catchphrase, “Lobotomy gets them home.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“In 1904, the American government spent $1.5 million taking thirteen hundred Filipinos from a dozen different tribes to the St. Louis Exposition. The Philippine Reservation became one of the most popular features of the fair, and the Igorrotes drew the largest crowds of all. By displaying the tribespeople in this manner, the US government hoped to gain popular support for its occupation of the Philippines by showing the American public that the Filipinos were innocents, a people far from ready for self-government, and in need of paternalistic American protection.”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, was published. Plath’s central”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“Unruly, violent behaviors would be “cured,” he insisted, as he went on to paint a picture of a day when his revolutionary procedure would empty mental hospitals completely.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“Of their first twenty patients, seventeen were female. This bias would continue for decades, with doctors across the country and internationally lobotomizing women disproportionately, at a rate estimated variously to be between 60 and 84 percent,16 even though men slightly outnumbered women as patients in America’s psychiatric hospitals.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“Despite the growing body of evidence to the contrary, Freeman genuinely believed he was well on his way to solving the nation’s mental health crisis.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“Here were eighteen human beings 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.”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“Freeman’s transorbital lobotomy procedure would slash the operating time from several hours to just ten minutes, and it didn’t require an anesthetic, an operating theater, or a surgeon. It cost a fraction of the price of its predecessor, which, Freeman believed, made it ideally suited to the state hospitals and to mass-scale operations.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“Treatments for psychiatric disorders were crude and ineffective. They included hydrotherapy; deep sleep therapy, in which chemicals were used to keep patients unconscious for a period of days or weeks; and insulin shock therapy, whereby patients were repeatedly injected with large doses of insulin to produce daily comas over a period of weeks. Electroconvulsive therapy, in which an electric current was passed through the brain to induce seizures, was also used with mixed results.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“Freeman and Watts diagnosed Rosemary with agitated depression. Joe Kennedy asked them to lobotomize her and insisted the operation be kept a secret. Rosemary was never consulted; not even her mother knew about the planned operation.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick

“From the outset, Freeman played down the risks, so determined was he to succeed. He was on a mission to make lobotomy the go-to operation for the treatment of seriously ill psychiatric patients.”
― Claire Prentice, Doctor Ice Pick