Dirty Pictures
Egas Moniz, inventor of the lobotomy, suffered terribly from gout in his hands, which became gnarled and swollen and frequently had to be bandaged. (You can get a glimpse of one in this picture.) Sometimes he’d be in so much pain that he’d be unable to travel to medical conferences. The last time Walter Freeman saw him, he asked his old mentor for permission to photograph his crippled hands. Angrily, Egas refused. I guess he wasn’t about to let Walter make him a subject.
Did this request stem from a) a desire to objectify and possess Egas b) tenderness or c) both? What about those endless pictures of patients in mid-lobotomy? What about Walter’s alleged affair with Mrs. Ionesco, his first transorbital patient?
