1935: The world’s first modern frontal leukotomy is performed in
a Lisbon hospital by Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz.
Moniz’s leukotomy (or leucotomy, from the Greek for “cutting
white,” in this case the brain’s white matter) soon became
popularly known as the lobotomy. It was not, however, the
surgical procedure now generally associated with lobotomies.
Rather, Moniz drilled two holes in the patient’s skull and
injected pure alcohol into the frontal lobes of the brain to
destroy the tissue, in an effort to alter the patient’s
behavior. Within a year of Moniz’s procedure at Lisbon’s Santa
Marta Hospital, American neurosurgeons Walter Freeman and James
Watts had performed the first prefrontal lobotomy in the United
States. Their approach, which they would continue refining in
subsequent surgeries, also involved drilling holes, but instead
of using alcohol they surgically severed the nerves connecting
the prefrontal cortex to the thalamus. With various refinements,
this became standard operating proc