Providentia

The Case of the Vampire who Wasn't

There are certain headlines that just naturally draw the eye.  

And, ao it was on November 6, 1892 in newspapers across the United States when readers saw a story with the following heading: 

"HUMAN VAMPIRE

Horrible Practices of a Deranged Portuguese Sailor"

Though the story itself described the more-or-less routine transfer of a prisoner from the Ohio Penitentiary to the National Asylum at Washington, D.C. (now know as St. Elizabeths Hospital),    it also mentioned that the "deranged" inmate "fought like a tiger" when  federal marshals came to take him (he had apparently thought he was going to be hanged).  Six guards were needed to hold him down long enough to be dressed and to secure him for the transfer.  

But it was the bizarre backstory about this particular prisoner that really accounted for the sensational headline.   According to the reporter who wrote the story, the convicted man, who was only known by the name "James Brown", had been convicted of two gruesome vampire-like murders on a ship, twenty-five years earlier.   

Described as a Portuguese sailor (though later accounts disputed this), Brown had been part of the crew of a fishing vessel sailing out of Boston in 1867.  During course of the trip,  a crewman named James Foster went missing.   While nobody had any idea about what had happened to Foster, the disappearance of a second crewman not long afterward led to the ship's captain ordering a shipwide search.    The bodies of both crewmen were found in the ship's hold though accounts seem to differ at this point concerning what happened next.   According to the most lurid account,  Brown was actually "caught in the act" of sucking the blood out of one of  the bodies.   A second account stated that Brown was caught trying to move the bodies to another part of the hold.   Whichever account you believe, there was no disputing the physical injuries were found on both bodies, not to mention reports that they had been drained of blood.

Following his arrest by the crew, Brown was taken back to Boston where he was promptly convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged  in October, 1866.   Though the date of the hanging had been set for March 15 of the following year, an appeal to then-President Andrew Johnson resulting in Brown's sentence being commuted  to life imprisonment.   Sent to the penitentiary in Charleston, Massachusetts, Brown became well known for his peculiar and, at times alarming, behaviour.   Along with being paranoid about anyone who tried entering his cell, he was also vigilant about his few possessions, especially a Latin book which he used to store important documents.   This included the commutation order signed by the President and Secretary of State William Seward which Brown guarded zealously at all times.   

Even among hardened convicts, Brown apparently stood out.  Described as a "small, dark-skinned man", people who interacted with him also reported that "when enraged, his eyes shine out like coals of fire."  Along with his physical appearance, guards were acutely aware of the crimes for which he had been convicted, as well as his tendency to lash out at anyone who upset him.   In fact, the prison staff were so terrified of him that he spent thirteen years in solitary confinement. Even though guards remained cautious around Brown at all times, he still managed to kill one of them and attack several others (something he would later claim was self-defense). 

Due to questions about Brown's sanity, he was sent to the National Asylum in Washington, D.C. for a psychiatric examination.   Whether because he wasn't showing severe enough symptoms or simply because they didn't want to have to deal with him,  the doctors in Washington soon declared him sane and he was returned to the Charleston penitentiary.  As for Brown, he kept making repeated  complaints about the treatment he was receiving there.   This included sending letters to the governor though all that he got in reply were polite form letters which he included with his other "legal documents."     In 1889, Brown was abruptly transferred to Ohio Penitentiary along with many other prisoners.   Though he was originally leery of the new prison, he would later describe it as  a "paradise" compared to some of the other prisons where he had been housed.   His behaviour improved and he was even allowed to work outside the prison walls for a time.    Still, Brown's mental state deteriorated soon enough and he was eventually placed in restraints after stabbing one guard with a fork and trying to stab several others.

During his more lucid periods, Brown continued to work on his release and even wrote letters to then-President Grover Cleveland in which he tried to set the record straight about his original conviction.  It likely didn't help that he rarely stuck to one story for long and was also prone to bizarre psychotic episodes.  At different times, he would claim to be the president of the New York Central Railroad and to be fabulously rich.   This included offering billions of dollars to have certain of his enemies brought to justice and $150 a day to have servants provide his meals (nobody took him up on this).     He also sent out daily requests for special meals including one memorable note that  proclaimed him to be "Thomas Azzote James Brown, warden of the Ohio penitentiary" and which called for "one barrel of potatoes, one barrel of onions, and one barrel of apples."   Despite his odd requests, there were times when he refused to eat food for days at a time after insisting that a former sweetheart of his, Mary Carey, had touched his food.

When not writing or otherwise acting out, Brown often spent much of his time scrubbing the floor of his cell with a piece of pumice stone.    He also neglected his personal hygiene, including allowing his nails to grow "like talons" and refusing to be shaved.   But the story of James Brown, vampire, largely peters out after his transfer.   

Still, his story wasn't completely forgotten.   In his 1932 book, Wild Talents, Charles Fort wrote about the original shipboard murders for which Brown was convicted though his book failed to shed any light on his eventual fate.   Still, despite the quiet fame Fort's book brought to James Brown's case, the strange lack of publicity surrounding the supposed double murder for which he had been originally convicted seems strange.   Certainly I was never able to find the original news story surrounding his conviction in 1869, something that seems unbelievable considering the bizarre details that were related decades later.   

So, did the vampire murders actually take place?  And how accurate were the later news stories about James Brown's mental state and the reason he was transferred to the National Asylum?  These questions might have gone unanswered if Robert Schneck hadn't explored the actual history of Brown's case in his 2005 book, The President's Vampire.  Not only did Schneck examine many of the original court documents surrounding Brown's trial and conviction but he also went into the actual case files on Brown that are still on record.   

What he learned was that there was only one actual murder on board the ship and, if the eyewitness accounts are to be believed, basically involved Brown retaliating against the victim, James Foster,who made a racial slur.   No vampirism was involved, just a knife which Brown used to stab Foster in the chest.   One eyewitness didn't even realize that Foster had been stabbed until he saw the blood.   As for the rest, it was simply a matter of what usually usually happened in cases of African-Americans killing victims who happened to be white.    It only took a jury seventy-five minutes to sentence him to death.

About the only remarkable thing about the case was that President Johnson commuted the death sentence citing "extenuating circumstances."  Certainly there's nothing surprising about the lack of publicity surrounding Brown's trial or his escaping the death penalty.    Though the rest of his story seems factual enough, there is still the question of how a relatively routine maritime murder was transformed into a lurid tale of high seas vampirism.    Though Shneck suggested that the story may have simply sprung out of the imagination of the reporter who wrote the story, possibly to spice up a slow news day, he did explore Brown's file at the Washington hospital where he had been sent in 1892.   

Brown's file included the many letter he wrote to President Grover Cleveland in which he pleaded to be released.    He also outlined the various mistakes that had been made at his original trial as well as conditions at the hospital where he was being kept.    Brown also wrote numerous letters to his treating physician, Dr. William Godding complaining of the physical abuse he had received from the attendants (which was likely true enough considering he was hardly the only one to report abuse).   And, aside from a brief note in his file indicating that he died in 1895 and buried in the hospital cemetery, that was pretty much it for James Brown.   

As how  the original vampire story even got started and whether or not he was ever the serial killer later stories made him out to be seem impossible to determine today.   Still, there was an unusual amount of vampire hysteria during the early 1880s, including the notorious Mercy Brown case which occurred at around the same time.  Could that have played a role in the how James Brown's story was reported?  At this point, it's anybody's guess.

 

 

The Fliess Fiasco

By 1895, Sigmund Freud's theories of psychoanalysis and the unconscious were still in the formative stage but his revolutionary "talking cure" for treating neurosis had already made him well-known. It seemed only natural that 27-year old Emma Eckstein should seek him out for treatment. She became one of Freud's first analytic patients and he viewed her as a special challenge with her complaints of menstruation-related depression, hysterical anxiety, and frequent nosebleeds. While he believed that Emma's symptoms were psychogenic in nature, he was cautious enough to call in a specialist to rule out possible physical causes.

Enter Wilhelm Fliess. A prominent otolaryngologist who practiced in Berlin, Fliess had already formed a long friendship with Freud since they met at a conference in 1885. In addition to a shared interest in neurosis, Fliess had come up with several, unique, theories of his own which had gained him some fame. Along with his work on biorhythms, Fliess had also developed what he referred to as the nasal reflex neurosis. Essentially, Fliess regarded the human nose as being an important link to sexuality and that sexual problems could be cured by treatment to the nose. Fliess claimed that he could give patients temporary relief by anesthetizing their noses with cocaine but he also advocated a more radical solution with nasal surgery. This operation involved removing several key bones in the nose.

In Emma Eckstein's case, Fliess viewed her as suffering from nasal reflex neurosis brought on by masturbation. Whatever misgivings she might have had about the diagnosis or the radical nasal surgery that Fliess proposed were quickly overcome by Freud's recommendation that she have the surgery. It probably helped that Fliess had also operated on Freud's nose to resolve some cardiac symptoms that he was experiencing. Despite the fact that Fliess had performed few operations of this type in the past and that he would be doing the operation in Vienna where he would not have the chance to follow up on his patient, the surgery went on as planned. He removed the turbinate bone in Emma's nose and instructed Freud to follow up on her after he returned to Berlin.

Emma experienced post-surgery complications from the very beginning. Not only was there considerable pain and hemorrhaging, but pus also began coming from her nose indicating infection (this was in a pre-antibiotic age). Freud called in a specialist who inserted a drainage tube but the bleeding continued along with a "fetid odour". Another surgeon, Ignaz Rosanes, cleaned the infected area and then, as Freud later described in a letter, "suddenly pulled out a thread, and kept on pulling. Before either of us had time to think, at least half a meter of gauze had been removed from the cavity. The next moment came a flood of blood. The patient turned white, her eyes bulged, and she had no pulse." Rosanes was able to pack the cavity and stop the bleeding after a minute but Emma was left "unrecognizable". Seeing what had happened, Freud fled to another room to strengthen himself with a glass of cognac. After returning, "a little tottery" to the room, Emma dryly commented, "So this is the strong sex".

She would need that sense of humour in the months that followed.  Recovery from the near-fatal surgery was extremely slow and left her permanently disfigured. All of which left Freud in an extremely awkward position. Not only had Emma been his patient, but he had referred her to Fliess and recommended the surgery that had nearly killed her. Freud was worried about his patient but he also wanted to protect his friend Fliess from accusations of medical malpractice.  In a letter that he wrote to Fliess afterward, Freud reassured his friend that "You did it as well as one could do it...Of course, no one is blaming you nor would I know why they should".

Freud's determination to protect Fliess took him to remarkable lengths. He wrote to Fliess some time later and concluded in his letter that Emma's bleeding episodes had been hysterical in nature and resulted from "longing, and probably occurred at the sexually relevant times. The woman, out of resistance, has not yet supplied me with the dates." The fact that much of the bleeding was due to the unnecessary surgery that Freud talked her into having seemed irrelevant. Amazingly, Emma Eckstein continued on as Freud's patient and she was the likely inspiration for some his later self-analyses (including his "Irma" dream).  It is a testament to Freud's reputation as a healer that Emma Eckstein viewed her treatment with him as being highly successful despite the disastrous surgery.

Although Emma recovered to some extent, she eventually relapsed and became a bedridden recluse. After seeing another surgeon and having a hysterectomy following treatment for a myeloma, Freud was furious at her belief that her condition was organic and that she had sought treatment from another doctor. In his opinion, this "ruined her for analysis", and he dropped her as a patient. Freud continued to be a significant influence in her life though and she would later recommend her nephew, Albert Hirst, to Freud for treatment in 1910. She also became a psychoanalyst in her own right and wrote a small volume on child sexuality.

While Freud's relationship with Fliess had long since soured, he continued to defend his decision to send Emma to Fliess and described her case as being one of his success stories. When Emma Eckstein died in 1924 at the age of 59, Freud blamed her later relapse and poor health on her hysterectomy. After Fliess' death in 1928, his widow contacted Freud and asked for the letters that Fliess had written to him. Freud tersely told her that he had destroyed them and tried to have his own letters to Fliess destroyed as well.  She sold the letters instead. Orthodox psychoanalysts have restricted access to these letters for decades until Jeffrey Masson succeeded in publishing the complete Freud/Fliess correspondence (he was later fired as Director of the Freud Archives as a result of his controversial works on Freud).

Since the Emma Eckstein case represents one of the few actual examples that Freud ever provided to prove the success of psychoanalysis, the fact that this success story was not such a success seemed an odd omission from Freud's later writings. The disastrous surgery that nearly killed her and the extent to which Freud concealed his own role in damaging her health was largely hidden for decades. The case of Emma Eckstein also represents a warning to health professionals about potentially harmful "fad" treatments that ultimately prove to be more harmful than the conditions they were meant to treat.

 

The Medical Menstrual Menace

For all that the prevailing view of 19th century men was that women were "the weaker sex", not every woman was willing to agree.   Despite the formidable barriers placed in their path, women managed to force their way into the most unexpected places.  And that included any kind of medical training for women.   Given that such training would involve exposing women students to material deemed "inappropriate" for their gender, most medical schools automatically rejected any women applicants.  

By the mid-1850s however, things began to change.   Along with the example of Florence Nightingale and her fellow nurses tending wounded soldiers during the Crimean war, Elizabeth Blackwell made medical history by being the first woman to graduate from a medical school in 1849 and the first to be placed on the United Kingdom Medical Register in 1859.  Along with her sister Emily, Blackwell helped mentor a new generation of women medical students, as well as promoting the cause of medical education for women in general.

Not surprisingly, there was still considerable opposition.    One of the most outspoken of the doctors opposing medical education for women was Edward H. Clarke of Harvard University.  And, of course, being a doctor, his arguments focused on the medical reasons for why they shouldn't become doctors.  In his 1873 book, Sex and Education, Clarke emphasized that women had the right to do anything of which they were physically capable.   But it was the phrase "physically capable" that was the sticking point for him.

As Clarke pointed out, the development of the female reproductive system placed strains on the body which prevented them from the kind of intellectual development seen in boys going through puberty.   Since the nervous system couldn't do "two things well at the same time,"  females needed to concentrate primarily on their physical development to ensure their health.  Though Clarke was careful in how he worded his views, the implication seems clear enough:  Women who received the kind of higher education that men did risked developing various health problems including "neuralgia, uterine disease, hysteria, and other derangements of the nervous system" because their overactive brains were using up the physical resources needed for proper development of their reproductive systems.

Even more importantly from Clarke's perspective, women who devoted too much time to intellectual pursuits also experienced mental changes.   This included losing their maternal instincts and developing "an appearance of Amazonian coarseness and force."  He added that such women "are analogous to the sexless class of termites. Naturalists tell us that these insects are divided into males and females, and a third class called workers and soldiers, who have no reproductive apparatus, and who, in their structure and instincts, are unlike the fertile individuals." 

That wasn't to say that Clarke objected to all higher education for women.  He stressed that men and women needed to be educated separately and that different educational methods be used to avoid the medical problems associated with overstraining the female reproductive system.   Female-only classes would also include periodic rest times keyed to their menstrual periods to avoid conflict.   They would also need shorter study hours due to their inability to handle the kind of academic pressure that men could.   As he pointed out:

A girl cannot spend more than four, or, in occasional instances, five hours of force daily upon her studies, and leave sufficient margin for the general physical growth that she must make.... If she puts as much force into her brain education as a boy, the brain or the special apparatus [i.e., the reproductive system] will suffer.

Given his own status as a Harvard professor, he concluded that women be prevented from attending Harvard Medical School or any other academic institution where they might be forced to compete with men intellectually given that such pressure would endanger their potential status as wives and mothers.   For that matter, forcing men to compete with women in this way would diminish both genders since, as he phrased it, "To make boys half-girls, and girls half-boys, can never be the legitimate function of any college."

Not that Clarke was the only medical pundit to argue that women were too unstable and frail to be educated alongside men.  In his 1900 address to the American Gynecological Society, George Julius Englemann urged that schools for girls needed to  deal with the "instability and susceptibility of the girl during the functional [menstrual] waves which permeate her entire being" by providing rest during the menstrual periods.  

Given fears that menstruation made all women unstable, even educational institutions that had begun admitting women raised concerns about damaging the health of their women students. An 1877 statement by the Board of Regents at the University of Wisconsin suggested that "it is better that the future matrons of the state should be without a University training than that it should be produced at the fearful expense of ruined health; better that the future mothers of the state should be robust, hearty, healthy women, than that, by over study, they entail upon their descendants the germs of disease."   In other words, women students risked damaging their own health and the health of the future children by too much study.  

Well, into the 20th century, the co-education of men and women remained a controversial topic and most schools pushed for a sexually segregated curriculum that taught "appropriate" subjects for boys and girls.  This included courses such as Home Economics which were meant to direct women towards their future roles as wives and mothers.   Separate colleges for men and women were also founded including Radcliffe College in Massachusetts and Vassar College in New York and quickly developed reputations for academic excellence.  Still, their graduates often found themselves at a disadvantage in male-dominated industries such as medicine.

Which brings us to Mary Putnam (later Jacobi)   Born in London in 1842, she grew up in New York where she privately studied medicine with Elizabeth Blackwell.  As the daughter of George Putnam, one of the giants of American publishing, she had an early introduction to the American literary community.   Her father objected to his daughter's choice to become a medical doctor but he ultimately came around.  After serving in the U.S. Civil War as a medical aide, she eventually earned her medical degree from the Woman's Medical College in Pennsylvania.   She then went to France and became the first woman to enter the Ecole de Medicine in Paris where she earned her second medical degree in 1871. 

In an unpublished autobiography written during the final years of her life, Jacobi explained that her determination to become a medical doctor began in her early childhood.  After finding a dead rat near her family home, she recalled thinking "If I had the courage I could cut that rat open and find his heart which I greatly longed to see.”   While her mother put a stop to this early experiment in comparative anatomy, she remained determined to learn more about science as a way to protect herself from the overly-enthusiastic religious education provided by her evangelical grandmother.   She also had trouble accepting the second-class status of women in general, especially since they were routinely shut out of higher education in most universities.  Her own uphill battle to be accepted as a medical doctor was proof of that.

On returning to the United States in 1871, she went on to become probably the most important woman physician of her era.  After marrying physician Abraham Jacobi in 1873 and changing her own name, she quickly established a reputation as a serious medical researcher with publications in all of the leading medical journals.  She also became a professor at the Women's Medical College of the New York Infirmary and also taught at the New York Post-Graduate Medical School.   Along with helping establish the Pediatric Clinic at Mount Sinai Hospital, she worked at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children and was a visiting physician at St. Mark's Hospital.

But Jacobi and other women physicians still had to struggle to gain popular acceptance.  Not only was it considered "unseemly" for women to have intimate knowledge of the human body, but many male physicians argued that women doctors weakened the profession due to their frail dispositions.  This is what made Edward Clarke's controversial book so damaging and the prospect of women becoming "unsexed" by medical training seemed like a compelling argument.

At the same time, there was also a fierce debate over the very nature of medicine and the role of science.  While scientist-practitioners like Jacobi stressed the importance of medical research in shaping how physicians treated their patients,   many doctors preferred to rely on a more intuitive approach.   That often caused conflicts for the male doctors treating women patients due to various misconceptions about female anatomy and how it affected patients psychologically.  It was during this era that "hysteria" became an overused diagnosis for a wide variety of psychological problems that women might experience in their lives  To treat this "condition", doctors often prescribed a bewildering variety of supposedly effective remedies, including the surgical removal of their ovaries -  an operation that led to the deaths of countless women patients.

Mary Putnam Jacobi spent her life countering this male-dominated perspective on women' health.   More importantly, she recognized the medical problems that women and children faced at a very personal level.  Jacobi and her husband had three children of whom only one survived infancy.  The pain of these losses caused them to dedicate themselves to improving child health through proper nutrition and prevention of infectious diseases.   Through the 1870s and 1880s, Mary Jacobi also dedicated herself to women's health issues.  It was during this period when she wrote her famous rebuttal to Edward Clarke's book, The Question of Rest For Women During Menstruation.  Published in 1876, her book won Harvard University's Boylston Prize and became an early classic in gynecology.   Challenging all of Clarke's arguments, Jacobi's book included her own extensive research on woman patients including statistics and medical data outlining changes in female health, strength, and emotion throughout the menstrual cycle.  Her hard evidence emphatically demonstrated that Clarke's ideas about frail women were completely false though many of her male colleagues tended to "cherry-pick" details out of her work to support their own biases.

In many ways, Mary Putnam Jacobi was full of apparent contradictions.   An early opponent of women's suffrage, she argued instead that health and education  were more important than being able to vote (she later changed her mind though).   She also clashed publicly and often with her fellow women's rights advocates, including Elizabeth Blackwell, over the direction their movement should take in ensuring greater sexual equality.  Though Blackwell argued that women should use their female values to provide the kind of medical care that male doctors couldn't, Jacobi maintained that men and women needed to be equal in the medical care they provided patients.  While many younger women doctors openly admired her powerful presence whenever she entered the room, as well as her formidable intelligence, her temper and inability to bear fools gladly "did not always add to her popularity" as Emily Blackwell once said.

She was an avid workaholic, only taking time off from medicine on Sunday afternoons.  Along with her grueling medical practice, she was also an dedicated researcher.   Even after being diagnosed with a fatal brain tumour, she spent her last months carefully documenting the progress of her disease which she published as "Descriptions of the Early Symptoms of the Meningeal Tumor Compressing the Cerebellum."   She died in June, 1906 survived by her husband and daughter.

Largely through the work of Mary Putnam Jacobi and other female doctors like her, more women than ever sought out medical careers.  In the United States alone, there were 7000 woman doctors  by 1900 representing five percent of all medical school graduates.  Still, arguments from critics such as Edward Clarke continued to be raised and women continued to face barriers in gaining wider acceptance by male colleagues and society in general.   Even today, women face challenges in many professions that continue to be male-dominated.   Though the medical arguments have long since been refuted, the informal barriers can be as difficult as ever especially since women are expected to balance family life and professional work much more seamlessly than their male counterparts. 

Mary Putnam Jacobi would understand that all too well.

The Happiest Man on Death Row

A Shocking and Senseless Crime.

On April 18, 1936, an unidentified intruder (referred to as a "degenerate" in newspaper coverage of the crime) entered a home in Pueblo, Colorado through an unlocked door.   The owners of the house were not present but their two daughters, fifteen-year-old Dorothy and twelve-year-old Barbara, were asleep in their beds.  After clubbing Dorothy to death with a blunt hatchet he had been carrying, the intruder then clubbed Barbara over the head as well.  Barbara was left unconscious and the killer fled the scene.    Their parents discovered them both the next morning.  After Barbara was rushed to hospital,  police determined that Dorothy had been sexually assaulted before her death.  Tracking dogs were used at the Drain house but no trail was found.

The rape and murder of Dorothy Drain and the attempted murder of her sister was apparently linked to other crimes that had occurred in the Pueblo area over the previous few weeks.   Another murder had taken place on August 2 with a woman being bludgeoned to death while her sleeping niece had her skull fractured though it wasn't clear whether the killings had been committed by the same person.   Another girl reported being molested near the Drain home though she managed to get away from her assailant.  

Police began questioning potential suspects and even offered a $500 reward for information leading to an arrest.   Acting on a hunch, the Pueblo sheriff placed men among the mourners at Dorothy Drain's funeral.   Among the mourners was Frank Aguilar who was employed on one of the local Works Progress Administration projects supervised by Dorothy's father.  Aguilar raised suspicions at the  funeral by his odd behaviour and unusual questions about the Drain investigation.   Though he was known to be married with three children, he was taken in for questioning.   An axe was found at his home which was seized because it resembled the one used at the Drain home.  

Arresting Joe Arridy

Another break in the case came later in August when police in Cheyenne, Wyoming picked up 21-year-old Joe Arridy for vagrancy and linked him to the murder of Dorothy Drain.  Arridy was the son of two Syrian immigrants who had immigrated to the United States and settled in Pueblo.   Despite being born and raised in Pueblo,  Arridy was an outcast for most of his life due to his intellectual deficits.    He had been an inmate of the Home for Mental Defectives in Grand Junction, Colorado until his escape on August 2 of that same year.  Aside from being a fugitive and a known resident of Pueblo, the evidence linking Arridy to the Drain murder was purely circumstantial.  Still, police were able to extract a confession from him after three hours of interrogation.  

In the verbal confession he provided, Arridy reportedly stated that he had entered the Drain home after seeing the parents leave the house at 11:00 PM on the evening of April 16.   After finding a light switch, he then proceeded to the bedroom the two girls were sleeping in and "criminally assaulted" Dorothy Drain before clubbing her to death with a hatchet he had been carrying.   He then clubbed Barbara as well and believed that he had killed both of them.   When asked why he had committed the crime, Arridy is said to have replied, "Just for meanness."  

After leaving the Drain home, his mother supposedly hid him for a week before he hopped on a train and fled to Cheyenne.   Police also took in members of Arridy's family for questioning.   Though they insisted that they hadn't seen Joe in years,  their houses were searched and two axes were seized as possible murder weapons.   As for Arridy himself, he was kept in custody in Cheyenne due to fears that a mob might lynch him if he were returned to Pueblo.   Much of the anger directed against the prisoner could be traced to the inflammatory news coverage of the case, all of which proclaimed the crime as being "solved" despite Arridy not even standing trial yet.   Most newspapers provided full details of his confession along with any other details of the investigation they could find.  There was no mention of Frank Aguilar at first since police were still trying to link the two men.   

Building a Case

While Arridy was quietly transferred to the Colorado state penitentiary for safe keeping, police worked to build a case against him.   Though one witness was able to verify that Arridy had been in the area of the Drain home about the time of the murder, no other physical evidence could be found.   There was no trace of the axe that he had allegedly used and Barbara Drain was unable to describe her assailant when she woke from her coma.   The superintendent of the institution that Arridy escaped from came to Pueblo along with police from Cheyenne to aid in the investigation. Interestingly enough, there was no attempt at linking Dorothy Drain's murder to the previous axe murder that had taken place in Pueblo.   Since Arridy had an ironclad alibi for the earlier killing, police ignored a possible link.  

Along with public outrage over the Drain murder, there was political pressure over how Arridy had managed to escape from the asylum where he had been kept.   Colorado's governor ordered all violent inmates from the asylum to be transferred to the penitentiary (regardless of whether they had been charged with anything).  

Unfortunately, problems with Arridy's testimony began almost immediately.   Described by police as having "the mind of a child", Arridy's confession yielded numerous contradictory details.  For example, he had originally said that he had struck the fatal blow with a club though this was later changed to an axe under further questioning.   He also mentioned being with a "man named Frank" and was "persuaded" to implicate Aguilar.   Not surprisingly, Frank Aguilar denied any involvement in the murders.

More holes in the case began to emerge as some of the other inmates who had escaped  with Joe Arridy were recaptured and questioned about what happened after they left the asylum.  Val Higgins, chairman of the state board of control (which managed the asylum) went on record in saying that he doubted Arridy was guilty and that even other officers were uncertain whether his confession was true.   

Then came a new development on September 3.   Frank Aguilar confessed to the murder of Dorothy Drain following nine hours of intense questioning by a tag team of interrogators including prosecutors and prison warden Roy Best.   In this new confession, Aguilar and Arridy had carried out the killing together.   Any doubts over Joe Arridy''s confession were set aside and the Pueblo district attorney announced that the case was "completely solved."   

Going to Trial

The trial of Frank Aguilar and Joe Arridy turned into a media spectacle.  Since both men faced the gas chamber if convicted, potential jurors were carefully questioned over whether they had any reluctance over imposing the death (one juror changed his mind in mid-trial).   Along with Aguilar's attorney, his mother, wife, and three children were also in attendance.  The defense focused on whether the confession was obtained through "merciless grilling" leading to a false confession.   Since Aguilar was also "feeble-minded", newspapers began calling for more rigid laws to ensure that similarly "feeble-minded" individuals could be properly incarcerated where they couldn't do any harm.

After an eight-day trial, Frank Aguilar was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of Dorothy Drain.  The trial had come to an abrupt close after Aguilar's defense attorney told the court that his client had confessed to him.  Though he tried to change his client's plea to guilty by reason of insanity, this was denied and the death sentence was handed down instead.

As for Joe Arridy, the outcome of  his trial in January seemed almost a foregone conclusion.  

Newspaper coverage already declared him guilty and his attorney made no attempt to question any of the evidence against him or how his confession had been obtained.   The only real sticking point was whether some so mentally challenged could be held responsible for his actions.   Testing revealed that he had an IQ of 45 and three state psychiatrists agreed that Arridy was "“incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, and therefore, would be unable to perform any action with a criminal intent."   There was also the fact that Barbara Drain had only identified Frank Aguilar as being at the crime scene and not Arridy.  

Still, Frank Aguilar's confession implicating Arridy, along with the anger surrounding Dorothy Drain's murder, overrode any of these objections.  While there would be no question of executing someone with this kind of intellectual disability today, the 1930s was a very different time.  It only took a jury four hours to find Joe Arridy guilty and to recommend the death sentence in his case.   

"You Can't Kill Joe Arridy"

Both Arridy and Frank Aguilar were held at Colorado state penitentiary where the executions would be carried out.    In Frank Aguilar's case, the execution took place on August 13, 1937, only months after his conviction.   It was a bizarre spectacle considering that a witness died of a heart attack at the same time that Aguilar died in the gas chamber.   His elderly mother died in hospital soon afterward.   Riley Drain, father of Dorothy Drain, voiced his satisfaction at watching Aguilar die.  "I am happy tonight," he told the press.  "But the job is only half done.  I want to be there when Joe Arridy goes too." 

But not everyone agreed that Joe Arridy deserved to die.  Warden Roy Best, a man who was widely known for his tough-minded stance on crime, found himself sympathizing with this condemned inmate who had the mind of a child.   He even bought a toy train for Arridy to play with and later described him as "the happiest man on Death Row."    Along with a warm bed and regular meals, Joe Arridy was happy at being treated better than he ever had been in his life.  He certainly never experienced any of the teasing or bullying he had endured for much of his life.  Guards, inmates, and the prison chaplain, Albert Schaller, went out of their way to protect him from the brutal realities of his imprisonment.  Whenever he wound up his toy train and sent it along the floor of the cell block, another inmate would wind it up and send it back to him. 

It was Warden Best who recruited Gail L. Ireland, a crusading attorney would would later become Colorado's attorney-general.  Through his dogged efforts, Ireland managed to secure nine stays of execution until the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in a three to two decision to let the execution proceed.    The end finally came on January 6, 1939, two years after Frank Aguilar's execution.  The governor of Colorado had already phoned the warden and told him to schedule the execution.  Albert Schaller and Roy Best then proceeded to explain to Joe Arridy that he was scheduled to die.   As Roy Best told reporters, the condemned prisoner seemed unable to understand that he would be executed.   At one point, he was quoted as saying, "You can't kill Joe Arridy because Joe Arridy never killed anybody."

Even on the day of his execution, Joe Arridy requested ice cream and lots of it for his final meal .  Whether he was fully aware of what was going to happen seems hard to guess at this late date though he definitely enjoyed being the centre of attention.   Albert Schaller came in and carefully read the last rites to him and Joe crossed himself before going back to play with his train.  Then Roy Best came in and read the death warrant before he was taken to the gas chamber to be executed.  To ensure that everything was in working order, a pig had been killed in the chamber one day previously.  

Stopping only to give his toy train to his death row neighbour,  Arridy was placed in the chamber where he was strapped down and blindfolded.   Roy Best patted his hand and the chaplain gave him a simple, "Goodbye Joe" before the chamber was closed.  No members of the Drain family were in attendance though Joe' s mother had been there for one final visit before the execution.    Grinning until the very end, he took three deep gulps of the hydrogen cyanide gas that ended his life.  He was formally declared dead just minutes after the gas cleared from the chamber.   The next day, Joe Arridy was buried the next day in the Woodpecker Hill cemetery on prison grounds.

Was Justice Done?

So, was he really guilty?   Or did the police take advantage of his intellectual disabilities to extract a false confession?   Decades after his execution, Joe Arridy's case has become a rallying point for opponents of the death penalty as well as disability activists.   In 1995, Robert Perske, a prominent legal activist working for the rights of the intellectually disabled, published a troubling book looking at the Arridy case and numerous others like it.   The book, Unequal Justice?,  highlighted how vulnerable people with intellectual deficits or similar disabilities are to giving a false confession during police interrogations.     Describing Joe Arridy's conviction, along with over seventy other cases in which people coerced into giving false confession, Perske's book generated renewed interest into Joe Arridy's case.   Inspired by the book, a group calling itself The Friends of Joe Arridy launched a grassroots campaign for a posthumous pardon. 

On January 7 2011, Colorado governor Bill Ritter Jr. issued an unconditional pardon for Joe Arridy, the first of its kind in Colorado's history.   The pardon came nine years after the landmark Atkins v. Virginia case outlawing the execution of prisoners deemed to be mentally retarded.   Today though, police interrogation of suspects with intellectual disabilities is still a controversial issue in many jurisdictions and cases of false imprisonment involving disabled prisoners continue to be reported by groups such as the Innocence Project.

Visitors to the Woodpecker Hill cemetery on the grounds of Colorado's state prison can find Joe Arridy's carefully tended  grave.   A new tombstone, two feet tall, was placed on the grave in 2006.  It features a picture of Joe and his toy train.

The Steinach Fad

Life wasn't easy for older men in a pre-Viagra era.   Which is what make the various "cures" being offered by men of science of the time so appealing.

Though aphrodisiacs to enhance libido have been reported since ancient times, these various concoctions (including such legendary ingredients as Yohimbine, Spanish fly, mad honey, and bufo toad) tended to depend more on the placebo effect more than anything else.   Still, advances in medical research, including the discovery of hormones also gave rise to some often bizarre attempts at boosting the male sex drive in willing patients.   This included the "reinvigorating elixir" developed by 19th century endocrinologist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard .  Basically involving hormone extracts from dog and guinea pig testicles,  his claims made Brown-Séquard briefly famous in the late 1880s until later researchers showed that the effects of the elixir on male potency were temporary at best.   

Despite this little setback, other researchers decided that Brown-Séquard hadn't gone far enough.   Taking inspiration from his work, French surgeon Serge Voronoff reasoned that transplanting actual glands would produce better results than hormonal injections.   After early success with transplanting thyroid glands from chimpanzees to humans, he then attempted to transplant the testicles of executed humans into well-to-do patients.   Unfortunately, demand quickly exceeded supply and he shifted his focus to transplanting animal testicles into humans instead.   The first of these operations took place in 1920 when he implanted slices from a monkey's testicles into the scrotum of a (presumably willing) human subject.   The results were apparently impressive enough for 700 of the world's leading surgeons at  International Congress of Surgeons meeting n London, England in 1923 to hail Voronoff's new surgical procedure as a major medical triumph.   

Not surprisingly,  Voronoff's early success also spawned a host of imitators, That included Dr. Leo Stanley, Chief Surgeon at San Quentin Prison, who began his own experiments with the testicles of executed prisoners (he also happened to be the prison coroner).  While he soon ran out of human testicles, he shifted his attention to goat glands instead despite Voronoff's own objections (he felt goat organs would be too incompatible with humans).   Though Stanley carried out more than 10,000 operations, his research got remarkably little publicity during his lifetime. 

Unfortunately, the enthusiasm surrounding Voronoff's work also inspired numerous hucksters hoping to cash in on the demand.    It was the Roaring Twenties, after all, and men wanted to, well, roar.  That meant plenty of customers for anyone offering treatments for impotence.    One of these was American surgeon, Leo Hansen, who maintained a private sanatorium near Cape Cod.  Along with his hospital, the good doctor also had a large goat farm and, for a price, he offered to surgically implant goat glands into older male patients as a way of rejuvenating them.   Though Voronoff himself denounced Hansen, in much the same way that he did with Stanley, Hansen was hardly the only surgeon to offer "goat gland operations."   Another, even more flagrant, fraud was "Dr" John R. Brinkley, whose medical degree came straight from a diploma mill.  Not that this stopped him from running his own private clinic in Milford, Connecticut where he began offering goat gland operations for  $750 per operation (a princely sum in those days).  

Still, for those leery about getting animal glands from doctors with dubious credentials, there was a much simpler alternative.  Much like Voronoff, Austrian physiologist and surgeon Eugen Steinach also carried out his own research into how hormones affected sexual performance in animals.  What he discovered was that transplanting male testes into female guinea pigs caused them to develop male sexual behaviours (such as mounting females).   This led Steinach to suggest the male sexual behaviour  was caused by hormones secreted by the testes.  Though he didn't actually discover testosterone (that would come later in the decade), he was one of the first endocrinologists to argue for its existence.  While encouraged by the successes of Voronoff et.al., Steinach suggested that there might be a better way to boost sex hormone production in males. 

As the good surgeon pointed out, not only did testicles contain specialized seminal tubules for releasing spermatozoa, they also contained "Leydig cells" between the tubules which released sex hormones.  But, what if  sperm-producing tissues actually competed with sex hormone-producing tissues for nourishment?  That meant that, if sperm production could be suppressed, then the testicles would produce more sex hormones as a way of compensating!   To accomplish this, he developed what became known as the Steinach operation (a.k.a., the Steinach vasoligature).  Basically, this involved a simple procedure in which one of the seminal ducts was tied off (a partial vasectomy, in other words).   

While the logic behind the operation might seem a little suspect, many men, desperate to regain their lost sexual prowess  in an era before Viagra, had no problem giving Steinach's procedure a try.  After all, it could be carried out in a doctor's office in only twenty minutes and was much less expensive than the expensive goat gland operations other doctors were offering.   Remember again that this was the Roaring Twenties when men often had more money than sense and the positive reports being offered by Steinach's early patients seemed legitimate enough.   

And, it seemed to work.    In his 1920 book, Verjüngung durch experimentelle Neubelebung der alternden Pubertätsdrüse (Rejuvenation through experimental revitalization of the aging pubertal gland), Steinach described how his patients  were transformed from "feeble, parched dribbling drones to men of vigorous bloom who threw away their glasses, shaved twice a day, dragged loads up to 220 lbs, and even indulged in such youthful follies as buying land in Florida."    He even boasted to having "thrice reactivated himself"  (and, no, I don't know what that means, either.)    In any event, "getting Steinached" soon became all the rage among older men who could afford the operation.    Thousands of patients flocked to Steinach's clinic in Vienna or received the operation from other surgeons  and the testimonials they provided meant more business than these surgeons could handle.  

That's not to say that other medical doctors agreed with Steinbach's ideas, however.   Dr. Morris Fishbein, then-editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association was outspoken in his criticism of Steinach and his "rejuvenation work."   In one editorial, he commented that "Dr. Steinach's new claims seem no better supported by scientific evidence than the claims he had previously made.  Unfortunately, those wishing for renewed youth suffer inordinately with the will to believe."   

Among the most famous of Steinbach's patients was Sigmund Freud himself.    As Freud would later relate, he  underwent the operation in 1923 as a way of reviving his "sexuality, his general condition, and his capacity for work."    Given that the 67-year-old psychoanalyst was also dealing with jaw cancer at the time, he was likely hoping that the operation would help extend his life (and he may have gotten his wish considering he lived until 1939).   

Then there was Irish poet, William Butler Yeats who got "Steinached" at the age of sixty-nine. and and was downright lyrical in his praise.    Not only did Yeats claim that his sex life was improved but his literary output had as well.   It likely helped that the doctor who performed the operation, hoping to test the great poet's virility following the operation, invited a woman half Yeats' age to have dinner with him (giving a whole new meaning to bedside manner...)   The experiment apparently worked.   Not only did Yeats brag about his "second puberty" but the Dublin Press quickly dubbed him the "gland old man."  

Yet another Steinach patient, Albert Wilson, was so enthusiastic about the benefits of his operation that he booked the Albert Hall in London to deliver a lecture with the title, "How I Was Made Twenty Years Younger."   Poor Mr. Wilson died on the evening before his triumphant lecture so we'll never know what the turnout might have been.

Sadly though, this early enthusiasm for Steinach's operation soon subsided as patients realized that the benefits of the operation were due to wishful thinking.   Which was fair enough considering that there really isn't any way that a vasectomy, partial or otherwise, could boost testosterone production.   Even at the height of Steinach's popularity, critics condemned the operation and Steinach's rejuvenation claims and the criticism grew even worse with time.  All of which likely contributed to Steinach never receiving the Nobel prize for medicine despite being nominated six times.

While Steinach was fortunate enough to be out of the country when the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, all of his medical records, books, and personal property was confiscated.   Eventually founding a new laboratory in Zurich, he would live in  Switzerland  for the rest of his life.    Aside from his sadness at becoming an exile, he also had to deal with what he referred to as the "unjust criticisms" of his life's work which he continued to defend.   On his 81st birthday which he celebrated in 1942, he told well-wishers that he still felt "spiritually many years less than my mathematical age."     

At the time of his death in 1944, he was hard at work on a new hormone serum (the details of which he had refused to divulge).    His obituary was printed in newspapers around the world, many of which referred to him as the "monkey gland doctor" and talking briefly about his rejuvenation work.   Unfortunately for him though, other researchers had already succeeded in isolating testosterone and even learned how to synthesize it.    Though testosterone treatments soon became widely available, none of Steinbach's grandiose claims about human rejuvenation ever panned out.

Though Eugen Steinach never really succeeded in discovering the secret of rejuvenation, he is still remembered as one of the pioneers of endocrinology and was among first to identify the role that testosterone and other hormones play in sexuality.   

"Sorceror" Sentenced in Bizarre "Witchcraft Extortion Scheme"

A California court has sentenced an Argentinian man to two years in prison for a "witchcraft extortion scheme" involving hundreds of victims around the world.

In what was referred to as "a despicable scheme that preyed upon people who put their trust in a phony," US Attorney Robert Brewer added that "this defendant used the vulnerability of the lovelorn to humiliate and extort them, and for that he will pay a price."    According to testimony provided at the trial, Argentinian man Ariel Boiteux launched his Paraguayan-based business, Amarres Immediatos, in 2015.  Potential clients were recruited through ads  on Facebook, Instagram, and MercadoLibre (which is comparable to Craigslist) offering services such as "casting spells designed to foster romantic relationships."  Boiteux and his business partners reportedly began their online business  after realizing the profit potential  in "amarres de amor," or "moorings of love."

After carefully choosing potential victims, Amarres Immediatos then instructed clients to engage in "magic" rituals to find love.  This basically involved providing committed clients with alcohol, candles, vegetables, and photographs and having them recite sexually explicit "incantations" and performing sexual deeds on camera.   The recordings would then be sent to Boiteux and Amarres Inmediatos for "magical" purposes.   Instead, Boiteux would use these recordings to blackmail clients into sending him money to avoid having the recordings released publicly.  

Since most of the victims were afraid of public exposure, Boiteux was able to carry on his schemes for years and victimize numerous clients in the United States, Peru, Mexico, and Switzerland.   One of the victims was a public figure who was not named in the trial but who was targeted for as much as $250,000 by Boiteux.  

The scheme continued until 2017 when an undercover Homeland Security agent called the phone number on Amarres Inmediatos's website and asked to purchase another victim's recording that had already been seen online.   When Boiteux went to pick the money that had purportedly been wired to him by a customer, he was arrested by Paraguayan police and later extradited to the United States for trial.   Three other people involved with the scheme were also arrested.

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Can Movies Inspire Copycat Violence?

In 1995, a 14-year  boy, Sandy Charles, lured a 7-year old acquaintance into some bushes near their homes in the town of La Ronge in northern Saskatchewan under the pretext of playing a baseball game with him.    With the help of an unnamed 7-year old accomplice, Charles then stabbed and bludgeoned Jonathan Thimpsen.   After the murder,  Sandy  Charles then mutilated the body by removing strips of skin which he took home to place in a tin can covered in foil.   An intense search of the area by friends and family led to Jonathan's body being found three days later.   After an investigation, Sandy Charles was arrested.

As Charles would later admit to investigators, he boiled the skin on the family stove to reduced the fat to liquid but had refrained from actually drinking it stating that, "I just wanted to stay the way I am."   According to testimony later presented in court, Jonathan had been selected at random so that his fat could be harvested based on a scene from the 1989 movie, Warlock.    The movie, featuring a 17th century warlock who travels to the future, includes an off-camera murder of a young boy so that his fat could be extracted to make a potion enabling the warlock to fly.   According to Sandy Charles' mother, her son had become obsessed with the movie and saw it more than ten times.    While he admitted committing the crime to her, he also insisted that he could not stop himself.  "H esaid it was like a dream. He said he didn't want to do it, but it was like it wasn't him doing it", she reported.   He also later said that "There's a strong spirit in my room that gave me these thoughts.   I was going to commit suicide until this thing popped into myh ead. I started thinking about killing someone else. Something wanted meto." 

The killing of Jonathan Thimpsen and the subsequent publicity of Charles' trial generated international publicity given the age of the victim and the perpetrator as well as the bizarre circumstances involved.    The RCMP officers investigating the murder concealed many of the details for fear of possible "mass hysteria."     In a public statement before the trial began, RCMP Corporal Dave Hoefl refused to provide full details about the murder due to the possible impact on jury selection.  "When you take a look at a 14-year-old doing this to a seven- year-old, there has to be a reason.  There is a reason. We just have to decide whether it's in the public interest to know that reason right now," he said.   "I'm not sure whether the community is ready for this or not - and in reality, I don't even think the province is ready for it."   Based on the circumstances of the crime,  Sandy Charles was tried for  murder in an adult court.

During the trial, his defense attorney, Barry Singer, insisted that Charles was not guilty due to mental illness and that the movie had a powerful effect on his mind.  "In the movie, the idea was that if you cut the fat off a virgin, unbaptised child, then boiled it down and drank it. That would give you the power to fly," said Singer. "Sandy was suffering from the delusion that if he did these things, it would give him the power to fly. The movie just gave him the know-how to do it."    Following the lurid testimony given during the trial, Sandy Charles was later found not guilty by reason of insanity on August 2, 1996.  He was transferred to the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon where he was held until 2013 when he applied to be transferred to a secure psychiatric unit closer to his home.  

As many expected, the trial generated considerable debate concerning the link between movie violence and real-life crimes.    In their coverage of the murder, the Toronto Globe and Mail cited experts who warned against drawing general conclusions from the murder but also warned that violent movies could be a "precipitating event" for an already troubled child.    Based on concerns relating to movie violence as well as a petition in the early 1990s calling for an end to violence on television, the Canadian government passed legislation forcing cable companies to enable parents to block violent programs  deemed unsuitable for  children.  Similar legislation was passed in the United States months later.

The debate concerning the potential impact of media violence on impressionable children is a longstanding one.   During the 1950s, Fredric Wertham's crusade against violence in comic books led to the implementation of the Comics Code Authority while similar crusades against violence in video games, music lyrics, and the Internet have had limited success.    Concerns over the potential impact of inappropriate content in movies and television programs has generated considerable controversy over the years due to concerns about children modeling their behaviour on graphic violence seen on screen. 

Moral panics over violent movie and television content remain a familiar phenomenon, especially as new, shocking media depictions of graphic violence help inspire  to calls for greater censorship.   Certainly the number of films that have faced censorship over the years  in the United States alone, often for minor scenes that would likely have gone unnoticed by the audiences supposedly being protected, is mind-boggling.   In other countries, battles over movies such as A Clockwork Orange led to either outright censorship or awkward compromises with movies being either dramatically reedited or removed from distribution altogether.   Though changing social standards and legal challenges led to a reevaluation of many of the production codes that controlled movie content for decades, the battle over what can be shown on the screen is far from over.  

But does media violence really lead to youth violence?  Though Albert Bandura's classic Bobo Doll experiments suggest that children tend to imitate aggressive behaviours that they see being modeled,  the impact of observational learning as it applies to movie and television violence seems more muted.   No clear causal link between media violence and real-life crimes has ever been found despite decades of media violence research.   Certainly the rise in movie and television violence of the past two decades has not led to a similar increase in real-life violence.  If anything, there has been a sharp decrease in violence during that same period, especially among adolescents.   Though school shootings and other examples of extreme violence appear to inspire copycat offenses, most young people appear perfectly capable of distinguishing between fictional violence and the real thing.  

A more controversial theory about media violence deals with the idea of catharsis, or using violent media content to purge viewers of their violent thoughts or fantasies.   The term "catharsis" was first coined by Aristotle who suggested in his Poetics that watching violent Greek tragedies helped audiences "through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions".   In other words, watching violent movies or television shows made people less inclined to commit violent acts.    This was in direct opposition to Plato's view that plays, music, and literature had a potentially harmful affect on morals (thus making him the first moral crusader).     Along with being a common theme in literature, catharsis has also been adopted by psychoanalysts such as Joseph Breuer and Sigmund Freud

While most moral panics surrounding media violence tend to peter out fairly quickly, new panics often arise to take their place.   Even as cases such as Sandy Charles continue to be invoked as a justification for greater control over media content, actual evidence to support such control is often lacking.    More graphic cases of copycat violence can definitely be expected in future but the knee-jerk reaction, and the calls for stricter controls, will likely follow the same old pattern.

Malawi Man Sentenced to Death over Slaying of Albino Teen

A Malawi High Court sentenced a 28-year-old man who confessed to the murder of a 19-year-old albino teenage as part of an alleged scheme to become wealthy by witchcraft.    

During the trial, the court heard testimony that the accused had based his scheme on instructions provided by a witch-doctor in neighboring Mozambique.

Albinos in many parts of Africa have been targeted in recent years due to the widespread belief in witchcraft rituals that use albino body parts for achieving wealth.  In Malawi alone, the abduction and murder of 150 albino children and teenagers since 2014 has reduced the country to a "state of terror" according to Justice Mclean Kamwambe who handed down the latest sentence.  

“The death sentence is appropriate as it reflects a sense of justice in the circumstances,” he said at Malawi’s High Court.  He added his hope that the sentence would sent a stern warning to would-be offenders and that albino killings have damaged Malawi's reputation abroad.

The recent rise in albino murders has become a major issue in the upcoming federal election with the main opposition party accusing the government of doing little to stop the killings.   Government sources insist that they are continuing their efforts to protect albinos, including launching a judicial inquiry and offering cash rewards for information about the abductions and killings

Similar cases of albino killings have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa alone.   There is also a lucrative black market trade in albino body parts, both in Africa and internationally.

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Surviving the Lobotomy

Howard Dully was only twelve years old when he underwent a lobotomy that would change his life.

"I didn't realize how barbaric it was until later in my life," he would relate in a 2008 media interview.  "As a kid, it didn't really matter to me."    When his father and stepmother first took him to  a San Jose hospital in 1960, he had no idea that any surgery had been arranged.   All that he was told was that he would be having tests relating to the behaviour problems he was having at home.  Instead, the surgeon he saw, Dr. Walter Freeman, carried out a transorbital lobotomy  (often referred to as an "icepick lobotomy)."   Succinctly stated, the procedure involved forcing a long surgical instrument (which did rather resemble an ice-pick) through the tops of both eye sockets.   The surgeon would then twirl the instrument to transect the white fibrous matter connecting the cortical tissue of the prefrontal cortex to the thalamus.   The end result, at least in theory, was that the surgical procedure would eliminate or greatly reduce a patient's risk of violent or inappropriate behaviour as well as making that patient much more manageable afterward.  

What was really remarkable about Howard's case was the fact that much of the information that led Freeman to carry out the lobotomy came, not from other medical doctors, but from the boy's father and stepmother.   By all accounts, Howard had been a normal boy until his mother's death from cancer when he was five years old.    It was his father's remarriage that caused their family relationship to go downhill, largely due to the animosity that developed between Howard and his stepmother.   As Howard himself would later report, "Oh, I hated her.   I didn't want any harm to come to her.  Physical harm.  It was more of a mental game.  She'd tell me to go to my room and I'd mutter under my breath.  She alway said that I had a look that would scare her."   

He also said that punishment for breaking his stepmother's rules were harsh.  His stepmother had strict rules in place and she would automatically blame him if those rules were broken.  This frequently meant repeated spankings, both from his father and from his stepmother.  Her exact reasons for singling Howard out aren't clear but likely related to his large size (he reached an adult height of six feet, seven inches), rambunctious nature, and his early hostility towards her for taking his mother's place.   Whatever the reasons, their relationship was always poor and it was the stepmother who first approached Dr. Freeman about her problem stepson, apparently based on a newspaper article she had read.

Freeman's own case notes on Howard help document what can only be viewed today as a  horrendous lapse of medical ethics and parental judgment.    In one note from November 30, 1960 (which also happened to be Howard's birthday),  Freeman wrote:  "Mrs. Dully  came in for a talk about Howard.  Things have gotten much worse and she can barely endure it.  Howard does sneaky little things, pinching and sticking pins in his little brother - and always seems to have the idea that everyone is against him.  I explained to Mrs. Dully that the family should consider the possibility of changing Howard's personality by means of transorbital lobotomy.  Mrs. Dully said it was up to her husband and that I would have to talk with him and make it stick."

When Portuguese physician Dr. Egas Moniz introduced the the lobotomy procedure in 1936, it was immediately hailed as a miracle cure for the countless psychiatric patients crowding hospitals around the world (and also earned Moniz the Nobel Prize in medicine).   Though skeptics at the time expressed misgivings about the effect that lobotomies had on many of the patients receiving operations, this hardly deterred the demand for the operation across North America and Europe.   By pioneering his own, much less invasive, transorbital lobotomy technique in the early 1940s, Walter Freeman became one of the most well-known doctors in the United States (Howard Dully would later refer to him as the "Henry Ford of psychosurgery").   Over the course of Freeman's career, he would conduct thousands of lobotomies to "cure" a wide range of conditions ranging from schizophrenia to homosexuality.

By 1960, however, medical opinion had already turned against the use of lobotomies as a form of psychiatric treatment.  Not only were medications cheaper and less invasive, but they were far safer for patients and avoided the "zombie-like" condition observed in many of Freeman's lobotomy cases.  As a result, the embattled Freeman faced increasing pressure to prove that his life's work hadn't been in vain.   When Howard's parents approached him, he certainly must have been aware of less radical alternatives for treating Howard, including psychotherapy and medication.  Instead, he agreed to do the the lobotomy on Howard, just as he had done for thousands of other patients. 

After the lobotomy, things hardly improved at home.   Howard never returned to school and eventually became a ward of the state (largely at his stepmother's urging).    After drifting through the foster system, Howard turned to petty crime with numerous terms in juvenile facilities and halfway houses.   Since he never felt welcome in his parents' house, he eventually terminated all contact with his family and largely drifted for years before finally straightening out his own life.   Despite the gaps in his memory left by the lobotomy, he eventually went on to earn a two-year degree, got married, and became steadily employed driving a tour bus. 

But the memory of the operation he had received as a child remained with him and he  finally began seeking real answers.    As he describes in a gripping radio documentary  which came out on National Public Radio in 2005,  his search for answers was spurred by his stepmother's death in 2000.  Though he had shared the story of his lobotomy with close friends and his wife, he had mainly treated it as a deep secret that he was reluctant to reveal publicly. 

Since his stepmother's death meant that he would no longer be able to get answers he wanted from her, he began to do his own research.   Beginning with online searches, he was eventually put in contact with radio producer David Isay who co-produced the documentary.   Isay had  a longstanding interest in psychiatric survivors and regarded Dully's story as being especially compelling.   Their joint search for answers would lead  to the discovery of Howard's medical file among Walter Freeman's archived papers (Freeman had died in 1972).     "My file has everything - a photo of me with icepicks in my eyes, medical bills, "  he said in the documentary.  "But all I care about are the notes.  I want to understand why this was done to me."  Ironically enough, the archives also contained the very leucotomes that had been driven into his eye sockets for the lobotomy, a grim reminder of the long-ago surgery.

The 22-minute documentary was narrated by Howard himself.   Though initially reluctant to provide his name, he decided to tell the entire story, including many of the details obtained from Freeman's file.   The documentary also included an on-air interview between Howard Dully and his father (his stepmother had died in 1970).   Dully's father refused to take any blame for the operation and insisted on regarding himself as a victim over having his life exposed on the air.  While the documentary and the 2008 book, , My Lobotomy: A Memoir, which followed provided Dully a measure of peace, he recognizes that there are some questions  about his ordeal that would never really be answered.

Though Howard Dully's lobotomy didn't appear to have any long-term consequences aside from permanent gaps in his memory, many other lobotomy patients weren't so fortunate.  Thousands of these patients, including such famous cases as Rosemary Kennedy, were often left completely incapable of caring for themselves and spent the rest of their lives in institutions.  That Howard Dully survived represents an inspiring testimonial to his resilience.  But it's also a chilling reminder of the legacy left behind by a medical procedure once hailed as a miracle cure. 

Viral Videos Triggers Polio Vaccine Panic in Pakistan

Police have arrested twelve people across Pakistan and charged them with releasing videos that supposedly showed that the polio vaccine being administered across Pakistan was  unsafe.    

Since Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world in which polio is endemic (Afghanistan and Nigeria are the other two), health authorities have launched a nationwide initiative to vaccinate thousands of children..  But widespread mistrust over the vaccine has led to accusations of a government concealing medical problems resulting from vaccine use.    This lingering mistrust spilled into active panic following the release of a number of videos onto social media claiming that children had been poisoned by the new vaccine.  In one of those videos, a Peshawar man, Nazar Muhammad, alleged that the vaccine was causing children to lapse into comas due to the vaccine passing its expiration date.   In another case, children at a private school began complaining of  vomiting which was attributed to the vaccination campaign.

Within hours, local mosques began using loudspeakers to spread the message that the vaccine was unsafe and more than 25,000 children were rushed to hospitals in northern Pakistan alone.  Though none of these children were showing signs of medical problems, anxious parents swamped medical facilities demanding that their children be seen.   At least one health unit was set on fire by angry protesters and the vaccination campaign was temporarily suspended in many districts to ensure the safety of vaccination workers.  Government spokesperson Babar Bin Atta said that action would be taken against the culprits.  “Panic was created to jeopardise the polio vaccination as part of a campaign and to put our children at risk of diseases. It is a criminal act and perpetrators will be held accountable,” Atta said.   

Still, despite the arrests of suspected agitators, including Nazar Muhammad, polio workers say that the panic has been a major setback in convincing people the vaccine was safe.  “More than 100 houses that I visited today refused to vaccinate their children against polio as they are gripped by the fear and panic created by the fake videos” Zia ul Islam, a young polio worker from the Mamund area of tribal district of Bajaur, told local media recently. “The videos have ruined years of dedicated efforts by polio workers.”

With more than 39 million children at risk for polio, and with eight new cases being reported so far this year, government agencies have been especially vigilant in promoting the safety of the new vaccines.   Most polio cases reported in Pakistan are from tribal areas of KP and Balochistan where health workers have to battle numerous misconceptions about oral vaccines.   Many parents are refusing the vaccine for their children due to health risk fears or the belief that it is un-Islamic.    However, recent efforts to involve tribal leaders, religious leaders, schools teachers and community workers have had a positive result to date.

The newest inoculation campaign is expected to continue with 260,000 front-line workers going door-to-door across the country.   Though providing oral drops to nearly 40 million children is a daunting challenge, health care statistics are reporting positive results.   Only twelve polio cases were reported in Pakistan last year, a sharp drop from the 306 cases reported in 2014.   

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