Welcome to a Hump Day (“Середина недели” in Russian): April 15, 2026, and for American’s it’s Tax Day (also known as Income Tax Pay Day), when your federal and state income taxes are due.
It’s also Anime Day, Jackie Robinson Day, honoring the first black player in major league baseball, who was neither born nor died on April 15, McDonald’s Day, celebrating the first McD’s, opened in Des Plaines, Illinois on this Day in 1955), National Banana Day, World Art Day, and Titanic Remembrance Day (the ship sank on this date in 1912).
Here’s a world map showing al the countries that have a McDonald’s (colors indicate the date the first one opened); gray countries lack McD’s, and black ones, like Russia and Iceland, have apparently ditched them. Africa and the Middle East are also bereft, though South Africa, Egypt, and Morocco have the cheap burger. But McDonald’s is not the world’s largest chain restaurant. According to Wikipedia, that honor goes to the Chinese chain Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, with 45,000 stores!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 15 Wikipedia page.
Posting may be light for about ten days as I’m going out of town for a week on Saturday; I have tasks to do before that, and there’s an imminent duckling hatch. Persistent insomnia is impeding my ability to write. Bear with me; I do my best.
Da Nooz:
*The U.S. blockade of Iran has begun, but it seems pretty leaky, as some ships from Iranian ports appeared to have gone through the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. stipulation was that all ships would go through freely save Iranian ships or any ship that was headed for or leaving Iranian ports.
Questions over the status of the U.S. military blockade in the Strait of Hormuz persisted on Tuesday, as tracking data showed that several ships had passed through the waterway, including some that had departed from Iran.
The blockade, which began Monday afternoon local time, applies to all maritime traffic entering or exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas, the U.S. military said. It remained unclear how American naval forces would enforce the prohibitions, which are aimed at cutting off Iran’s oil income after the United States and Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war. The two sides are observing a two-week truce set to expire April 21.
Some of the vessels that passed through the strait on Monday — both before and after the 10 a.m. Eastern deadline when the Trump administration said the blockade had gone into effect — had departed from Iran, were carrying Iranian products or were under U.S. government sanctions, according to the trade analysis firm Kpler. It was not immediately known whether the ships that had departed from Iranian ports fell within a “grace period” around the deadline, had gained permission to pass or had somehow bypassed the blockade.
Christianna, a Liberia-flagged cargo ship, exited the Persian Gulf through the strait on Monday night, after leaving the Iranian port city of Bandar Imam Khomeini, Kpler said. It said the ship was not carrying any cargo.
Elpis, a methanol carrier, traversed the strait roughly around the time that the U.S. blockade began, according to ship-tracking data. Kpler said that the vessel had been at the Iranian port of Bushehr. The United States had placed sanctions on the ship last year under an earlier name, Chamtang, over its connections to the Iranian oil trade.
Ship tracking data from Bloomberg and Vesselfinder shows movements of several other vessels in and around the strait over the last two days.
I’m curious why the blockade is leaky. On the one hand, we can totally blockad an entire island–Cuba–but aren’t successful in this narrow strait. Why? And how do we enforce a blockade if a ship refuses to obey it. Are we going to shoot it? Board it? Details are missing here, but inquiring minds want to know.
UPDATE: The NYT’s report still does not clarify if the blockade is working as planned:
The U.S. military said early Wednesday Iran time that it had completely stopped all commercial trade to and from Iranian ports less than 36 hours after implementing a naval blockade.
President Trump had ordered the Navy to stop any ships from transiting the Strait of Hormuz after weekend peace talks in Pakistan ended with no agreement. But ship trackers showed that several Iran-linked vessels had traveled through the strait after Central Command began its blockade operation on Monday. It was not immediately clear from independent sources if there was any Iranian shipping traffic in the region on Wednesday morning.
U.S. Central Command said more than 10,000 American forces with over a dozen warships and dozens of aircraft were enforcing the blockade, while allowing vessels traveling to or from non-Iranian ports to transit the waterway.
Iran has mostly choked off the strait, a vital passage for global oil and gas supplies, in retaliation since the war started in late February. There are few signs that it is fully reopening despite repeated threats from Mr. Trump.
The president reiterated on Tuesday that Iran was keen to negotiate a deal. He told The New York Post that new talks could take place over the next two days in Pakistan. And he said in a Fox News interview that the conflict was near its end. “I think it’s close to over, yeah, I mean I view it as very close to over,” he said when Maria Bartiromo asked if the war had ended, speaking in a clip from the interview posted on Tuesday night.
*Saudi Arabia, which I believe urged the U.S. to finish the job with Iran, is now telling the U.S. they should back off the Iran blockade lest Iran block other vital shipping routes.
Saudi Arabia is pressing the U.S. to drop its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and return to the negotiating table, fearing President Trump’s move to close it off could lead Iran to escalate and disrupt other important shipping routes, Arab officials said.
The blockade is aimed at raising the pressure on Iran’s already crippled economy. But the officials said Saudi Arabia has warned Iran might retaliate by closing the Bab al-Mandeb—a Red Sea chokepoint crucial for the kingdom’s remaining oil exports.
The pushback is a sign of the risks and limitations of U.S. efforts to pry open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran shut early in the war by attacking ships in the waterway, cutting off around 13 million barrels a day in oil exports and sending futures prices above $100 a barrel.
Time for a geography lesson. First, from Wikipedia, the nature of this strait: “The Bab-el-Mandeb acts as a strategic link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Most exports of petroleum and natural gas from the Persian Gulf that transit the Suez Canal or the SUMED Pipeline pass through both the Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz.” Here’s an enlarged bit of a map from the same article. The blue dot shows the Bab al-Mandeb, with the Strait of Hormuz to the right, off the map. Wikipedia adds this:
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is 26 kilometres (14 nautical miles) wide at its narrowest point, limiting tanker traffic to two 2-mile-wide channels for inbound and outbound shipments
Back to the main article:
Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen control a long stretch of coastline near the Bab al-Mandeb and severely disrupted the waterway for much of the war in the Gaza Strip. Iran is putting pressure on the group to close the chokepoint again, Arab officials said.
“If Iran does want to shut down Bab al-Mandeb the Houthis are the obvious partner to do it, and their response to the Gaza conflict demonstrates that they have the capacity to do it,” said Adam Baron, an expert on Yemen and fellow at New America, a policy institute in Washington.
Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian paramilitary group that now controls the Strait of Hormuz, said a blockade could lead the country to close the Red Sea gateway.
Gulf states don’t want the war to end with Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz, their economic lifeline. But many including Saudi Arabia are pressing the U.S. to resolve the issue at the negotiating table and are scrambling to restart talks, regional officials said. Despite the public hard line from both sides, the two combatants are actively engaging with mediators and open to talks if each shows enough flexibility, the officials said.
It’s a damn shame that there are these quirks of geography that happened to be controlled by Iran or its proxies. Every day there’s a new cause for anxiety, and no clear resolution.
*At It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal summarizes the talks between Israel and Hezbollah:
“We’re not about to release the peace doves,” an Israeli official told The Times of Israel. As Israel prepares for its most senior in-person engagement with Lebanon in its 78-year history, expectations are being managed.
There is one problem preventing the flight of those doves—the actor that would inevitably attempt to shoot them down, and its continued ability to do so: Hezbollah. The threat the terror group poses was summarized well by a BBC headline this morning: “Lebanon seeks peace, but Hezbollah needs to be convinced first.”
Almost a year and a half after Israel agreed to a ceasefire on the condition that Hezbollah disarm, and three months after the Lebanese Army declared “mission accomplished” in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah remains very much a threat. The Lebanese government still lives in the shadow of its civil wars, fearing that a confrontation with the Shiite terror group would fracture Lebanon’s delicate ethnic coalition.
Whether the negotiations will succeed depends on one question: Is Lebanon entering these talks wishing to reclaim its sovereignty, or is it merely looking to avoid the consequences of having surrendered it?
The talks are a consequence of the latter. After escalating Israeli airstrikes in the country, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun made a public appeal for talks, and with some pressure from a U.S. administration wishing to avoid the disintegration of the ceasefire, Israel accepted. Yet, short of lending these floundering discussions a few more days of life, the bilateral talks will achieve nothing unless a solid plan and an ironclad commitment are made to disarm Hezbollah.
The UN Security Council Resolution 1701 demands that Hezbollah disarms itself. There are several thousand UN forces in Lebanon tasked with enforcing it. They do nothing. Hezbollah broke what cease-fire there was by firing missiles at Israel. The UN should do its job and envorce 1701.
Also, yesterday Israel marked Holocaust Remembrance Day:
It’s Tuesday, April 14, and Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day. For the past two years, the wail of a siren has signaled a frantic scramble for shelter in Israel. This morning, however, the nation froze. In their cars, on bustling street corners, and within the quiet of their homes, Israelis stood in absolute silence for two minutes to honor the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
Here’s a video showing everything coming to a stop:
*Health and science reporter Benjamin Ryan has an informative article in the Free Press: “The medical establishment is tearing itself apart over youth gender surgeries.” It’s a long ‘un, but here are a few excerpts (article not paywalled):
Does the American Medical Association (AMA) support or oppose the medical gender transition of minors? An ambiguous statement from the prestigious group in February has set off a firestorm of accusations within the AMA and prompted threats of an investigation for consumer fraud by Republican state attorneys general.
The uproar began on February 3, when the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) became the first major U.S. medical association to issue a policy statement recommending against gender-transition surgeries for minors. The surgeons’ statement cautioned that there is little quality research on the long-term consequences of performing transition surgeries on young people, such as double mastectomies and genital alteration. The society cited “emerging evidence of treatment complications and potential harms” of such interventions.
In covering this development, The New York Times reported that while the AMA continued to support treatment for minors seeking gender-related care, it also endorsed the plastic surgeons’ position: “In the absence of clear evidence, the AMA agrees with ASPS that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood,” read the AMA statement.
For the two months since The New York Times published the AMA’s statement, no matter what the medical society has done—stay silent, deflect, deny, reiterate—the controversy has multiplied.
. . . In the U.S., advocates for medical gender transitions for minors have long cited the mantra that such interventions are supported by every major medical organization. But now two major medical societies have expressed serious concerns about the practice. This comes at a time when some Western countries have sharply restricted medical transition of youth, after first ardently embracing it.
It also comes at a time when the Trump administration is seeking to end this medical practice and has threatened to cut access to federal funds to hospitals that perform such transitions. In response, gender clinics and programs at multiple major children’s hospitals have closed recently.
The ongoing controversy at the AMA over what exactly their position is demonstrates how divided the medical field has become over this issue. According to internal video and documentation obtained by The Free Press, the organization’s own top brass can’t even align on its official public stance.
. . .On March 29, Aizuss wrote on the group’s message board that he had addressed the matter “with senior management” and would be discussing it further at the April board meeting. He said that “there continues to be a discrepancy between what the New York Times states they were told and what our communications people say they said.” He added: “If our spokesperson said that the AMA agrees with the ASPS, that was a clear error and was not authorized by the board. He unfortunately does not recall if he used those words.”
For now, as politicians and medical professionals from both sides of the political spectrum are pushing the AMA to take a declarative stand on gender care for minors, the medical society remains in limbo on the matter.
This is a mess, and a mess for one reason only: gender ideology. The AMA statement about deferring interventions until adulthood is based on evidence—or rather, the lack thereof. The controversy at the AMA is ginned up by gender ideologues who simply must have transition surgeries approved for minors, even if the long-term results aren’t in. Is there a mensch in the AMA?
*The WaPo reports that the world’s oldest gorilla has turned 69. (Wikipedia says that “Gorillas tend to live 35–40 years in the wild,” but this is a captive animal, living in the Berlin Zoo.) And there are two species; Fatou is a Western Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), and, moreover, a member of the Western Lowland Gorilla subspecies, which is Gorilla gorilla gorilla.
Legend has it that Fatou, a western lowland gorilla, was brought from Africa to the port of Marseille in France in the late 1950s by a sailor who traded her to settle a bar bill. She ended up with a French animal trader, who sold her to the Berlin zoo.
“She’s one of the very few and very old animals that still came from the wild,” Hachmeister said. “Nowadays we send the animals back to the wild and not the other way around.”
While the zoo has been unable to confirm the stories about Fatou being traded in a tavern, they said she arrived at the zoo in what was then West Berlin when she was around 2 years old in 1959.
Decades ago, she was already one of the oldest gorillas in the world, so zookeepers picked a date to celebrate her birthday: April 13. Fatou was first recognized by Guinness World Records as the World’s Oldest Gorilla in 2019, and her story was highlighted again on her birthday.
Hachmeister noted that Fatou has some health challenges in her old age. Her eyesight is weaker, though she can still hear well. She has arthritis and no longer has teeth, so her food (mostly vegetables) is cooked to make it easier to eat. She can no longer eat some of her favorite snacks (blueberries, raspberries and strawberries) because the fruit is too high in sugar.
Fatou’s health is closely monitored by a team of veterinarians and caretakers who have worked to keep her comfortable and happy decades beyond the typical life expectancy of a gorilla in the wild, according to the zoo.
These days this critically endangered species would never be removed from the wild, and I suppose the gorillas in zoos are now bred in zoos. That’s a shame, because these are highly intelligent and social animals whose genes are all about living in the wild. I’m glad they’re taking good care of her, but nowadays these animals should not be on display, even if, as the Berlin Zoo argues, seeing them and their closeness to humans will promote their conservation. That’s bushwah.
Here’s a video of Fatou on her birthday:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron appear to be at odds, even though they’re friends:
Hili: You’ve stepped over the red line.
Szaron: Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize it was there.
In Polish:
Hili: Przekroczyłeś czerwoną linię.
Szaron: O przepraszam, nie zauważyłem jej.
*******************
From Give Me a Sign:
From The Language Nerds:
From This Cat is Guilty:
From Masih; Maryam Tahmashi has now been arrested. pending deportation hearings:
On one side:
Maryam Tahmasbi, daughter-in-law of a Madoumeh Ebtekar a U.S. embassy hostage-taker, living in America, enjoying freedom of choice, freedom of dress, freedom of everything.On the other side:
Arezoo Badri, shot by morality police for refusing compulsory hijab,… pic.twitter.com/mXjBTjyRz3— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 12, 2026
From Luana, but it’s a sin to wake up a sleeping duck. Remember the story of Muhammad and his cat Muezza!
Hyper relaxed sleepers are very common in the feathered families. pic.twitter.com/ux92Qv6Rdg
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 14, 2026
From Malcolm; cat vs. black swan:
Cats.. 😅 pic.twitter.com/3TnlgcsaN3
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) March 5, 2026
Two from my feed. The first one is from Turkey, of course:
At Istanbul Airport, a cat got on an escalator going the wrong way and no matter how hard it tried, it couldn’t reach where it wanted to go 😂 Luckily, a kind man noticed, picked it up, and placed it on the correct escalator . pic.twitter.com/JmYfahxn3p
— Dailymeow (@Dailymeoww1) April 14, 2026
I have no idea if this is AI, but it’s cute:
😂 One groundhog has already accepted his fate and calmly endures the nail trim.
The other… the other is still in denial. Every clip sends his soul straight to his feet.
Waiting for a nail trim is a whole new level of thriller. pic.twitter.com/k2pQ5b7uyr— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) April 13, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Polish Jewish man arrived at Auschwitz in 1942 and was dead 12 days later. He was 29 years old. https://t.co/VPyXYlgcz8
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 15, 2026
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, a palindrome:
No lynxes in unisex nylon.#palindrome
— Anthony Etherin (@anthonyetherin.bsky.social) 2026-04-13T13:59:41.633Z
I’m too dumb to understand how this was taken:
The NASA live stream is terrific but low on visuals for the mo (nearly 600k ppl watching and the audio is fab). So great to see this brief image of an iphone picture of the moon taken by one of the astronauts.
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-04-06T20:52:41.976Z
I read this the other day and did not know what to make of it – so I take a risk and ask :
This guy on eXtwitter was saying “Shoah” is the accurate word to use because “Holocaust” puts an emphasis on the perpetrators – almost like an ongoing terror/fear.
Comparatively, “Shoah” truly honors the victims.
It just struck me – I think there’s something to it, but what do I know.
Eh, it’s a matter of taste. “Holocaust” means a certain type of offering at the temple in Jerusalem, in which an animal is totally consumed by fire, rather than being cooked and eaten. Before World War II, it also meant an all-consuming fire of any kind. There’s no emphasis on the perpetrator. There’s no implication that there’s any “perpetrator” at all. The difference between the terms is that one is Greek and one is Hebrew. There’s some justice in using a Hebrew name for an event that largely affected Jews. I suppose the counter-argument is that gays, Romani, and other groups were also affected.
I followed the discussion here some time back on insomnia, but my situation then was different: a sleepless night every few weeks or month followed by a very restful night each time…nothing like what you and readers wrote about. But now I am having several nights in a row every few weeks where either I cannot get to sleep until 2 or 3 in the morning, sleep 30-60 minutes and then am awake till dawn or 6:30 when I normally arise. It seems unaffected by my daytime schedule and activities…whether or not I walk our 3-4 mile wooded trail with friends in the morning, whether or not I read a bit when I go to bed or whether I have wine with dinner, how much reading and writing I do during the day, whether I have something on my mind to get done (in past years I have slept very well the night after I finished doing our taxes…this year insomnia). It just seems to be a new ( and very frustrating) characteristic of my life.
I write this to say that I am starting to understand your frustration about this seemingly autonomic behavior that, at least on its surface, seems to be totally irrational.
On what I hope is a happy side of life for you, please have safe travels next week and good visits if you are seeing friends.
I’m a late adopter of an Apple watch that tracks sleep patterns. Now looking at each night like a school test; I’ve yet to score a hundred; i think 90 is my best score and I’ve failed quite a few nightly tests.
Good idea. Thanks. My wife, kids, and grandkidsalmost all got apple watches a few years ago and comparing their sleep numbers was all the rage for awhile. I had forgotten about that. Ithink I will get one; some data can’t hurt. Maybe there will be something in it.
The first McDonald’s restaurant was established in California, not Illinois, and in 1948, not 1955. The latter is the date of the first one opened by Ray Kroc after he bought the McDonalds out.
The first McDonald’s was opened by Richard and Maurice McDonald on May 15, 1940, in San Bernardino, California, located at 14th and E Streets. Originally a barbecue drive-in, the brothers revamped it in 1948 into a streamlined burger stand with a limited, fast-service menu. The site now operates as an unofficial museum.
I remember very clearly when McDonalds arrived in my hometown. Hamburgers were 18 cents. When we went there—eating in the car, which I loved—I ordered one or sometimes two hamburgers, fries, and a small Coke. I always wanted a milkshake (called a “shake”), but it was too expensive. The fries were awesome.
When I was a child, there were a few McDonald’s in our city. Yes, hamburgers were 18 cents. You could get a hamburger, a cheeseburger, fries, and that was pretty much it. No Big Macs or anything like that, no chicken or fish. There were other burger joints in town, but McDonald’s was the best. Some of those other joints had burgers greasy enough to be able to grease a Buick. (I worked in a gas station at that time, and cars needed grease jobs in those days. And on payday, a trip to McDonalds was a treat. But you are right—the shakes were too expensive for me.)
That’s right on Historic Route 66. San Berdoo has come down a long way since its heyday.
That’s an excellent palindromic sentence!
Edited to add: Jackie Robinson Day marks the date when he “broke the color line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson_Day
Thanks to our British cousin for clarifying “why April 15?” For Jackie Robinson Day. These barriers are so hard to break…I shoulda known it as an American fanof the sport.
If you like palindromes, check out Weird Al’s video “Bob” on YouTube. The video is a parody of Bob Dylan’s, “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
If you’re even remotely interested in Weird Al I can’t recommend this profile enough. It’s sweet and well written, and reaffirmed my faith in humanity and all the fascinating, brilliant weirdos like Al. The intro to the audio version is good.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/magazine/weird-al-yankovic.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bFA.V4AJ.K0ONC43rhJ2n&smid=url-share
I can’t help reading this as weird artificial intelligence.
Thanks, Doug – will do!
Edited to add: Brilliant!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eIty7RqbF9o&pp=0gcJCTQCo7VqN5tD
I remember when the first McDonald’s opened in Russia. The news was about the deficits of the Russian bureaucracy. McDonald’s had a supply chain set up to ensure everything needed was taken care of. All they asked the Russians for was sand and concrete, and the Russians couldn’t deliver.
Regarding Holocaust Remembrance Day:
Yes, the people in this country stand silently for 2 minutes at 10 a.m. On the roads, cars stop, and people get out and stand. The same thing happens twice on Memorial Day (next week)-once in the evening, once in the morning.
this year, Hezbollah made sure to time one of their rocket barrages on the north of the country to coincide with the siren. (Obviously, in such cases, people run for the shelter when they hear the sirens or the sounds of rockets.)
My guess is that if the Houthis were going to cause some trouble on the Ba’b el Mandeb (Yemen) they would have done so by now. Plus getting supplies from Iran has to be harder now for many reasons.
Just a guess.
The whole stand off is a battle of wills – kinda exciting actually.
D.A.
NYC
The response of the US to a Houthi blockade is likely to be far more severe than the response to the Iranian blockade. The US has an interest in preserving Iranian infrastructure, so that if the government is overthrown, the people have a basis for a good life.
I really don’t think the current administration cares about the people in Iran having the basis for a good life. I think they are more concerned about making money from Iranian oil. That is, they are if they can be said to be acting rationally at all.
Yes indeed. Plus the Houthis don’t have a lot of arrows or strategics in their quiver.
A problem is they’re hard to hit: they have evasion down pretty well given the punishment we, the Israelis, the Saudis, Emiratis and even the Qataris (for about 5 minutes) delivered.
D.A.
NYC
In reference to the “affirmative care” fashion trend, it is informative to review the history of the practice in the US of prefrontal lobotomy: https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/a-procedure-gone-wrong-a-brief-history-of-lobotomies-in-the-united-states
Excerpt: “During the early years (1935-1944), popular press articles favored lobotomies. Consequently, lobotomies rose in popularity. This is because lobotomies were performed before controlled studies about their long-term impacts were known.”
Jon I’d argue trans/”affirmative care” is worse – it effects more people, and from a larger pool of potentials.
Further, lobotomy was done on very untreatable, generally older patients, not healthy gay/autistic/troubled young people. Lobotomy was at a time when brain science was in its infancy and the “tool box” was pretty much empty. And the patient’s symptoms were very real and quantifiable, not just “gender feels”.
all the best,
D.A.
NYC
I came back here mostly to comment that to my recollection (refreshed with a bit of research today) lobotomy was never subjected to any controlled study in humans. Rather, the enthusiasm in America was down almost entirely to the personality of one Walter J. Freeman II, MD, who proselytized various forms of it on this side of the Atlantic, over the misgivings and objection of most of the neurosurgical community. (Freeman wasn’t a surgeon.) When it became known that his uncontrolled and self-laudatory case series with outcomes assessed by himself selectively omitted and downplayed seriously bad outcomes noted by others, enthusiasm for it waned. The case of Rose Kennedy, JFK’s sister, and the fictional case of “R.P. McMurphy”, who at least as played by Jack Nicholson was obviously not suffering from any mental illness except what we might call today, “Authority-Defiant Conduct Disorder”, are included in the account below.
I also endorse David’s observation that lobotomy served a useful purpose given the state of treatment for severe mental illness at the time. Had the major tranquilizers beginning with chlorpromazine (American trade name Thorazine) not been invented, we undoubtedly would still be using it. It would have been (as it was) more humane than the manacles, strait jackets, muscular and thuggish psych “orderlies”, primitive sedatives, and locked cells the seriously disturbed schizophrenics and manics had to be restrained with theretofore. These were real (mental) diseases and we lacked any way to produce calm by reducing terrifying psychotic symptoms, especially “voices” and paranoid delusions. (Thorazine also had the financial benefit of allowing state and provincial mental hospitals to be closed and the drugged inmates discharged to the street.)
Even the use of lobotomy to suppress defiant patients — the calumny leveled at it in plays and novels — had some justification. McMurphy did try to murder Nurse Ratchet, after all. (Yes I suppose she had it coming.) A medical administrator of a mental hospital couldn’t have insane people running around trying to kill the staff, could he?
This is correct, especially considering that the prefrontal lobotomies were not done using stereotaxic methods. It would be impossible to quantify how much tissue was cut suing the methods at the time, and the number of surgeries done by different neurosurgeons.
Had those surgeries been more precise, it could be argued that they are more humane than chronic drug delivery. The latter affects brain function throughout much of the brain, whereas surgery is far more localized. The value of the antipsychotic drugs (chlopromazine, haloperidol) lies in the fact that administration is reversible, which is not true of the surgeries. (Of course, I do not support widespread use of psychosurgery.)
Nowadays, antipsychotic drugs are far more specific that those first-generation antipsychotics, but the general problem of systemic effects still remains.
What is the current view of ECT and insulin-shock therapy?
I don’t know about insulin shock. But ECT is still used today for cases of otherwise intractable severe depression, and can provide temporary relief. Needless to say, it is only done in consultation with a psychiatrist and at the request of the patient, after other treatments have not been effective.
The Wikipedia page on the now-thoroughly discredited insulin shock therapy is illuminating, both clinically and for insight into institutional cultures. Unlike ECT it was a protracted ordeal. Patients could be kept in coma or “sopor” for hours at a time for weeks or months. Some had seizures but most didn’t. Unlike lobotomy, IST was submitted to randomized trials against coma with barbiturates, and against the then-new neuroleptics (major tranquilizers) and failed both. Death, stroke, and brain damage that resembles anoxia such as from cardiac arrest and carbon monoxide poisoning were real risks.
The phrase “cat lady” is a BADGE OF HONOR.
BTW, watching escalator kitteh, I was worried that her tail would get caught in the steps. Fortunately it did not.
I know this comment is too late, and it will never be read, but if you like palindromes and other word gymnastics, by all means follow Anthony Etherin on Substack. You will be amazed on a daily basis, and educated by his etymological forays.
I read it!
Bookmarked Anthony Etherin.
Thanks.