Egas Moniz - Education and Career

Education and Career

Moniz was born in Avanca, Estarreja, Portugal as António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz. He attended Escola do Padre José Ramos and Colégio de S. Fiel dos Jesuítas, studied medicine at the University of Coimbra, then trained in neurology in Bordeaux and Paris. In 1902, he became a professor in the Department of Neurology, but soon left that post on entering politics in 1903. He established the Partido Republicano Centrista and represented it in the Portuguese parliament from 1903 to 1917. Later he was Portugal's ambassador to Madrid (1917) and minister of foreign affairs (1918). Meanwhile he continued to practice medicine and teach physiology and anatomy, and in 1911 he became a professor of neurology at the newly-established University of Lisbon.

In 1920, he gave up politics and returned to medicine and writing full-time. In 1927 Moniz developed cerebral angiography, a technique allowing blood vessels in and around the brain to be visualized; in various forms it remains a fundamental tool both in diagnosis and in the planning of surgeries on the brain.

For this, he was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize. He also contributed to the development of Thorotrast for use in the procedure and contributed many lectures and papers on the subject. He is considered a pioneer in the field.

In 1936, he published his first report of performing a prefrontal leucotomy on a human patient, and subsequently devised the leucotome for use in the procedure. He judged the results acceptable in the first 40 or so patients he treated, claiming, "Prefrontal leukotomy is a simple operation, always safe, which may prove to be an effective surgical treatment in certain cases of mental disorder." He also claimed that the benefits, even if some behavioral and personality deterioration occurred, were outweighed by what he saw as reduction in the debilitating effects of the illness. But he conceded that patients who had already deteriorated from the mental illness did not benefit much, and he did no long-term follow up. The procedure enjoyed a brief vogue, and in 1949 he received the Nobel Prize, "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses."

In 1939, Moniz was shot by a patient (one who had not been lobotomized) and subsequently used a wheelchair. He continued in private practice until 1955, when he died just as his procedure was falling into disrepute.