Egas Moniz
You don't need to be Editor-In-Chief to add or edit content to WikiDoc. You can begin to add to or edit text on this WikiDoc page by clicking on the edit button at the top of this page. Next enter or edit the information that you would like to appear here. Once you are done editing, scroll down and click the Save page button at the bottom of the page.
Please Take Over This Page and Apply to be Editor-In-Chief for this topic: There can be one or more than one Editor-In-Chief. You may also apply to be an Associate Editor-In-Chief of one of the subtopics below. Please mail us [1] to indicate your interest in serving either as an Editor-In-Chief of the entire topic or as an Associate Editor-In-Chief for a subtopic. Please be sure to attach your CV and or biographical sketch.
António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz, pron. IPA: ['ɛgɐʃ mu'niʃ], (November 29, 1874 — December 13, 1955) was a Portuguese neurologist. He was the first Portuguese to receive a Nobel Prize, "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses"[1].
He was born in Avanca, Estarreja, Portugal. He was the inventor of prefrontal leucotomy which was changed to lobotomy by American surgeons Walter Freeman and James Watts, who introduced a larger severing of the neural fibres. It was used as a surgical approach to the radical treatment of several kinds of mental diseases; one of the several types of psychosurgery. For this work, Moniz received the Nobel Prize in 1949, jointly with the Swiss neurophysiologist Walter Rudolf Hess.
Career
Moniz studied medicine in the University of Coimbra and thereafter neurology in Bordeaux and Paris, France. He returned to the University of Coimbra as Chairman of the Department of Neurology (1902), but soon left it to enter politics as a representative in the Portuguese parliament (1903-1917), as minister of Foreign Affairs (1918) and later as Ambassador to Spain, under the First Republic (1918-1919). He left politics, returned to the University of Lisbon, where, from 1921 to 1944, he was professor of Neurology. In 1927 he developed cerebral angiography, the technique of using x-rays to visualize arteries and veins that are transiently opacified with the injection of a high density agent. This procedure would allow physicians to map blood vessels in and around the brain, permitting the diagnosis of several kinds of neurological disorders, such as tumors and arteriovenous malformations. He received the Oslo Prize for this discovery[citation needed]. The method is widely used today for the diagnosis and treatment of vascular diseases in the brain.
In 1936, Egas Moniz and his associate Almeida Lima developed for the first time a surgical technique to interrupt the nerve fibers which connect the thalamus (a relay for sensory information coming into the brain) to the prefrontal cortex (already known at the time as a brain structure involved in higher intellectual functions of the brain, and in emotions, as well). His technique was widely used around the world in the next decade, and Moniz received many honours and international recognition, culminating with the Nobel Prize.
His work also attracted controversy and moral concerns. His surgical approach (leucotomy) was modified in the US by Walter Freeman to lobotomy, a much cruder procedure, who used this technique indiscriminately[citation needed]. Derivatives of leucotomy are still performed today in Great Britain and the USA, for the treatment of psychiatric disorders in well selected patients[citation needed]. In Russia, a related technique is currently used for the treatment of chronic drug addiction in desperate volunteers, after other methods have not had any success in dealing with those severe cases.
Dr. Moniz was shot in 1939 by a psychiatric patient. He survived and recovered completely[citation needed]. The patient gave vague reasons for the shooting saying he was unsatisfied with the dose of a drug Dr. Moniz had prescribed. Dr. Moniz died in 1955, in Lisbon, Portugal, from hematemesis[citation needed].
His former country house became a museum where one can see his art collection. It can be visited in Avanca, in the north of Portugal.
See also
References
External links
- The 1949 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology
- Egas Moniz Museum
- The History of Psychosurgery by Renato M.E. Sabbatini
- "Last-Ditch Medical Therapy — Revisiting Lobotomy", Dr. Barron H. Lerner, New England Journal of Medicine, July 14, 2005.
- Psychosurgery.org blog
- Moniz blog by Alvaro Macieira-Coelho
Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine |
|---|
Johannes Fibiger (1926) · Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1927) · Charles Nicolle (1928) · Christiaan Eijkman / Frederick Hopkins (1929) · Karl Landsteiner (1930) · Otto Warburg (1931) · Charles Sherrington / Edgar Adrian (1932) · Thomas Morgan (1933) · George Whipple / George Minot / William Murphy (1934) · Hans Spemann (1935) · Henry Dale / Otto Loewi (1936) · Albert Szent-Györgyi (1937) · Corneille Heymans (1938) · Gerhard Domagk (1939) · Henrik Dam / Edward Doisy (1943) · Joseph Erlanger / Herbert Gasser (1944) · Alexander Fleming / Ernst Chain / Howard Florey (1945) · Hermann Muller (1946) · Carl Cori / Gerty Cori / Bernardo Houssay (1947) · Paul Müller (1948) · Walter Hess / Egas Moniz (1949) · Edward Kendall / Tadeusz Reichstein / Philip Hench (1950) |
| Complete roster · 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present |
ca:António Egas Moniz de:António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Monizfr:Egas Moniz hr:António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz id:António Egas Moniz it:Antonio Egas Moniz sw:Antonio Egas Moniz ja:エガス・モニス no:Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Monizfi:Egas Moniz sv:Egas Moniz
Acknowledgement and Attribution Regarding Sources of Content
Some of the initial content on this page may be incorporated in part from copyleft sources in the public domain including wikis such as Wikipedia and AskDrWiki. Drug information for patients came from the The National Library of Medicine. Infectious disease information may have come from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Differential Diagnoses are drawn from clinicians as well as an amalgamation of 3 sources: 1.The Disease Database; 2. Kahan, Scott, Smith, Ellen G. In A Page: Signs and Symptoms. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004:3; 3. Sailer, Christian, Wasner, Susanne. Differential Diagnosis Pocket. Hermosa Beach, CA: Borm Bruckmeir Publishing LLC, 2002:7 .
