Mimi BairdHe Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter's Quest to Know Him

When reviewing a book, Groucho Marx’s comment comes to mind: “From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.”Unlike Groucho, I read this book and convulsed with sadness, disgust, shock, and gratitude that Mimi Baird had the grit, courage, and literary skills to write this book.This story weaves together psychiatric history, gut wrenching descriptions of barbaric psychiatric treatments, biography, and fine literature --- all rolled into a book you can’t put down. The story was originally called, “Echoes from a Dungeon Cell.” We learn that when Mimi Baird was 6 years old, and her sister Catherine was 4 years old, her father left the family.Dr. Perry Baird was removed from his home against his will and taken to Westborough State Hospital---the first of several psychiatric hospitals. Ms. Baird’s father was never talked about, and she saw her father only once when she was a teenager.Ms. Baird’s mother divorced her father in 1944 – the year he left – and quickly remarried. Ms. Baird wrote: “After my mother remarried if was as if I had lost both my parents.” In her 50’s, Ms. Baird got a second chance to know her father through his writings, scrawlings on onionskin paper found boxed-up in a relative’s garage, medical records, and conversations with colleagues and friends. Her father’s memoir documented five months of his dreadful life in a psychiatric hospital giving us are rare, perceptive view of a mind on a roller-coaster of sanity and madness. Her father suffered from manic-depression, now called bipolar disorder, at a time when there was no effective treatments. Ms. Baird’s father attended Harvard Medical School and graduated with highest honors --- a man who spent all his time studying. He specialized in dermatology and started a successful practice in Boston. During his training, Dr. Baird worked with the famous physiologist Walter Cannon. Early in his career, driven by his research and his knowledge of mental illness, Dr. Baird published the article, “Biochemical Component of the Manic-Depressive Psychosis,” in “The Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease: April 1944 – Volume 99 – Issue 4 – ppg 359 – 366. Psychosis took over Dr. Baird’s brilliant mind when he was 29 years old. He lost his license to practice medicine. His thoughts became more bizarre. He endured treatments that included straitjackets, cold packs, an 11 day narcosis treatment using sodium amobarbital, and a frontal lobotomy. You may remember that the physician who performed many frontal lobotomies won a Nobel Prize for this “treatment.”Dr. Baird had much to say about is psychiatric treatments:“I pray to God that in the future I shall be able to remember that once one has crossed the line from the normal walks of life into the psychopathic hospital, one is separated from friends and relatives by walls thicker than stone; walls of prejudice and superstition. It may be hoped that psychopathic hospitals will someday become a refuge for the mentally ill and a place where they may hope to recover through channels of wise and gentle care. But the modern psychopathic hospitals I have known are direct descendants of ancient jails like Bedlam, and I believe that they do harm, not good.” After returning to normal health from a manic state, Dr. Baird writes:“The feelings of self-criticism, shame, and embarrassment are true foes and they inflict the deepest wounds, undermining self-confidence and making it hard to face the world.” In May 1959, a year after she graduated college, Mimi’s mother called to tell her about her father’s death.He died in Detroit, Michigan in a hotel. He came to Detroit from Texas for work. He drowned in the bathtub, the result of a seizure some say was associated with his lobotomy. About the book’s title, Ms. Baird tells us her father loved to ride horses. Riding partner friends described Dr. Baird: “He was supercharged with energy…He wanted to beat everyone – other riders didn’t care for him, but he was a great athlete…Your father, he couldn’t help himself. You know, Mimi, he wanted the moon.” This book is a significant contribution to the psychiatric literature. We have come many miles from the barbaric treatments Dr. Baird endured. Now, many people with manic-depression can live normal lives ---- yet many people are never properly diagnosed or treated. Many experience an average of 10 years of mental chaos before effective treatment. And psychiatric maladies are still marinated in fear, shame, and stigma. We have many miles to go. This book helps to lead the way.

After half a century, a family member gives manuscripts—-really, a journal, written by Dr. Perry Baird to his daughter, Mimi, who had, essentially, grown up without her father. From the time he “disappeared” when she was 6, to an afternoon chat when she was 13, Mimi had the sense that she had a father but he was elusive and she was somehow kept apart from him. Indeed, his brilliant (Harvard educated) mind entered manic phases which were punctuated by periods of lucid observation which are articulated in his journal. He had destructive rages when he literally destroyed furniture in the hospital, seemingly capable of superhuman strength, and other times he had a certain detachment and ability to think critically: “I became convinced that many patients entered Westborough in a state of mild mental illness but were made critically ill, or even hopelessly ill, by the procedures employed and the fought handling by nurses and attendants. The doctors play an inconsequential part. There are so many patients that it is impossible to give adequate attention to any patient.” Dr. Baird was a keen observer.Mimi would notice the changes in her father’s script as he meticulously kept his journal. His handwriting would vary from being “orderly and regular,” and “the suddenly it would become expansive, out of control, when his grip on sanity was slipping.”. There would be pages and pages of visions and delusions with handwriting which would balloon as Dr. Baird moved from observer to experienced.There is something redemptive about this accessible volume: Mimi has given her dad an audience so that we can know from him what manic feels like, is like. We can wonder at its cause and its elusive cure. This book serves as an essential companion piece to Robert Whitaker’s excellent “Mad in America.”The book is compelling—-I read it in a single day—-and triumphant in an odd way as Mimi has given her dad’s life meaning. I found myself wondering now that we know more about what it is like, why can’t we do something useful about it; after all, we put a man on the moon.

This account of Baird's father's prolonged and devastating bipolar illness and its treatment in the early twentieth century provides us with a glimpse of the barbarities carried out in mental hospitals of the time. Particularly striking are the patient's own dispassionate accounts of his actions -- how he broke windows, bent iron bars, climbed walls. There is a bit too much "filler"" in this book. I would have preferred some modern commentary on the illness to stories of how person X or person Y supplied certain pieces of information , for example.

A truly astonishing story being told at exactly the right time. This is a must read (and soon must watch) for anyone effected by mental health or interested in medical history. And for the avid reader looking for the next page turner, HWTM is a great destination.

As someone with bipolar disorder, I found this captivating account of the condition and its early treatments enlightening and relatable. Intriguing insights into the mind of a doctor who is struggling and how it affects his family.

Good read. My granddaughter had bipolar disorder. She hid it very well. Manic gave her wild thoughts and she stayed in her room when depressive. I never saw her depressed but I didn’t know she was bipolar. She lived with her parents. After she killed herself at 18 I tried to read about bipolar to gain some understanding of this horrific final act. The book helped me try to make some sense of what she endured. I will truly never understand and she left incredible pain. I wish there were second chances. She sat on a cold bank overlooking a beautiful water and ended her life with a loud bang but not a whisper of a reason.This sadness is not her fault. She had to escape.

I was lucky enough to attend a lecture given my his granddaughter. This book does not disappoint in showing the true side of mental illness. Well done.

Mental illness and treatment so difficult to face and comprehend. I trust today we treat each other kinder and have treatments and medications that help. I do know that our society did not approve of these types of treatment or the institutions and therefore, closed many insane asylums. Many patients today still need a safe place but no where/few places to go to be treated and cared for.

This is a book within a book. The unpublished manuscript of well respected Bostonian and decorated Harvard educated, Dr Perry Baird. He writes his tome while institutionalized. Why is he in a state institution? As a doctor does he realize when he's slipping? His daughter, narrates backed with interviews with those who knew him and medical files.

It was a sad, not feel good book. A man so brilliant was possessed by mental illness .. it is a daughters search for a father taken from here as a child.

Very Informative book written in lucid and coherent manner. This discloses the view of the society towards its members do does fit into its rule.