Untitled (November 9, 2013 9:49AM) (detail), by Richard Misrach, 2013. Archival pigment print, 60 x 80 inches. © Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles.

States of Mind

Volume XI, Number 1 | winter 2018

Miscellany

At a hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1952, a Dr. Hatcher tried to convince a Dr. Cranford to watch him perform a transorbital lobotomy. “Nothing to it,” Hatcher said. “I take a sort of medical ice pick, hold it like this, bop it through the bones just above the eyeball, push it up into the brain, swiggle it around, cut the brain fibers like this, and that’s it.” Cranford responded, “I was going to breakfast, but I’ve changed my mind.” Hatcher laughed. “You can change your mind,” he said, “but not like I can change it.”

Strength of mind is exercise, not rest.

—Alexander Pope, 1733