Egas Moniz Quotes

In 1949, neurologist Egas Moniz (1874-1955) received a Nobel Prize for his discovery of ‘the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses’. Today, prefrontal leucotomy is derided as a barbaric treatment from a much darker age, and it is to be hoped that, one day, so too might antipsychotic drugs.

Normal psychic life depends upon the good functioning of brain synapses, and mental disorders appear as a result of synaptic derangements…. It is necessary to alter these synaptic adjustments and change the paths chosen by the impulses in their constant passage so as to modify the corresponding ideas and force thought into different channels.5 Alter synaptic adjustments. Sounds delicate. Yeah, right. These were the words of the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz, around the time he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1949 for his development of frontal leukotomies. Here was an individual pathologically stuck in a bucket having to do with a crude version of the nervous system. Just tweak those microscopic synapses with a big ol’ ice pick (as was done once leukotomies, later renamed frontal lobotomies, became an assembly line operation).

Egas Moniz discovered that if you took people with extreme anxiety, suicidal depression, or other mental health issues (aka crises of hope) and maimed their brain in just the right way, they’d chill the fuck out.