Prof. A. E. Moniz | Nature

PROF. MONIZ is a most distinguished neuro-surgeon whose international fame rests on two contributions to medical practice especially. Between 1927 and 1937 he introduced and developed

cerebral angiography as a method of diagnosis of intracranial disease. All the essentials of the method at present in occasional use the neuro-surgical clinics are due to him. He published

of certain psychoses, which described the operations of prefrontal leucotomy and the impressive results of its application to twenty cases of psychosis. Imagination, boldness and skill were

necessary to demonstrate, as he did, the feasibility of the injection of radio-opaque substances into the internal carotid artery, and of the operative destruction of the white matter of the

prefrontal lobes. He has described in his monograph how he came to devise leueotomy. He had noted how little the extensive removals of brain tissue by Brickner and Clovis Vincent had

impaired social behaviour, and had considered the possibility of lesser removals of brain substance as a means of reversing the rigid functioning of groups of brain cells, which he thought

to be responsible for the persistence in psychosis of painful ideas. The impetus to the first attempt came in London in August 1935, when he heard Jacobsen's description of his work with

Fulton on the effects of frontal ablations on, the so-called neurotic behaviour of chimpanzees. Assisted by Dr. Almeida Lima, he then perfected the technique of leucotomy within a few

months.

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