Egas Moniz is a Portuguese doctor who popularized lobotomy in the 30s. The method was fast, cheap and effective, but it turned people into zombies. In this way, the lives of 60 people were destroyed. sick. The author of the innovative method was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1955.
- Lobotomy is a procedure that involves the surgical connection of the prefrontal cortex with other structures
- The procedure was to heal people suffering from depression and other severe mental illnesses quickly and easily
- Doctors ignored the side effects of the method. Subjected to the treatments, they lost their sense of identity, became apathetic and passive.
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Egas Moniz began his scientific and political career before the First World War. He studied in Coimbra, Bordeaux and Paris. In 1902 he became a professor at the University of Coimbra. After nine years, he moved to Lisbon, where he became the head of the department of neurology at the local university and worked until 1944.
During the “Great War” he was the Portuguese ambassador to Madrid and then the head of the Ministry of Diplomacy. After the end of hostilities, he chaired the Portuguese delegation at the Versailles peace conference. After the war, he returned to neurological research. In 1926, he was the first in the world to conduct an angiographic examination of the brain in a person suffering from intracranial cancer. However, the breakthrough for Moniz was to be the next decade.
In the 30s, the Portuguese doctor Egas Moniz began to search for new, surgical methods of treating mental disorders. He noticed that strokes, injuries and neoplastic changes lead to emotional changes in patients. Therefore, he was looking for a method that would work on patients in a similar, though planned, way. He was helped by a scientist from Yale who during his lecture noticed that patients with damaged frontal lobes are emotionally suppressed, but interestingly that their intellectual abilities remain unimpaired. It was enough for Moniz. In a hospital in Lisbon, he carried out 20 experimental operations which, according to him, were successful.
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What was the course of the operation under his supervision? The treatment began with drilling two holes just above the eye sockets. A special needle with a plunger (similar to a syringe) was inserted through the hole, which inserted a wire hoop into the brain. By turning it, a small piece of the brain was cut out. The procedure was similar to drilling an apple.
Moniz and his associates they ignored the irreversible side effects that appeared at that time. Patients experienced unprecedented seizures convulsions, apathy, antisocial behavior and decreased concentration. Lobotomy was hailed as a “miracle cure” and the procedure began to be used on an increasing scale. In Europe and the USA Even homosexuals were operated in this wayto “restore their morals”, in turn in Japan they were subjected to lobotomy children that cause educational difficulties.
- He impregnated patients with his own sperm. It is not known how many children he has
Nobel and gunshot
The therapy became so popular that in 1949 the Karolinska Institute (he was the one who awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine) awarded the Portuguese with this unique distinction for, as stated in the justification, “discovering the therapeutic value of lobotomy in selected psychoses”.
In the same year, the professor was shot in the street by a mentally ill man. As a result of his injuries, he switched to a wheelchair. He died in 1955.
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Fight to receive the Nobel Prize
Lobotomy as a treatment method gradually began to lose its popularity in the mid-50s, when the first psychotropic drug chlorpromazine was introduced. Controversies related to the side effects of surgical treatment led to a discussion on taking the Nobel from the Portuguese. An appropriate application was sent to the Karolinska Institute by Christine Johnson and other relatives of people who underwent a lobotomy 70 years ago.
The members of the Nobel Committee did not take away Moniz’s distinction. In a statement, they admitted that “they are relieved that more effective and humane methods are used to treat the seriously mentally ill”.
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