No Brain Operation for Train Bandit

Editorial, 1922

Were Roy Gardner, the mail train bandit, permitted to undergo the suggested brain operation to make him a law abiding citizen, it would be among the probabilities that he would become an angel. Contrary to the generally prevailing opinion, brain surgery is considerably more of a failure than a success.

Gardner had been told that his propensity to rob mail trains was due to pressure on the brain, and a simple operation to remove the pressure would give him normal moral sense. In the Federal penitentiary, in Leavenworth, Kans., he demands that the operation should be performed, insisting that Attorney General Daugherty promised him relief through surgery.

The Department of Justice decides now that the operation cannot be performed. Prison officials had wired the department that they believed the operation would not do Gardner any good.

Many moral irregularities are due unquestionably to mental or physical disease or deficiency. Medical or surgical treatment is effectual with many of them, but it is not a certain remedy or cure.

As to brain surgery proper, it is a last resort in a desperate case. The great majority of operations on the brain itself are fatal. Though trephining the skull and removing pressure is a simple performance, it is more often unsuccessful than successful. Surgical experience obviously is, therefore, sufficient warrant for the department's adverse decision.

—The Monessen Daily Independent, Monessen, PA, Oct. 23, 1922, p. 2.