History of Neurology - Neurosurgery

Neurosurgery

In 1878, William McEwen (1848–1924) removed a meningioma, and the patient survived for many years. Nine years later, Victor Horsley (1857–1916) was the first physician to remove a spinal tumour. Americans surgeon Harvey Cushing (1869–1939) successfully removed a pituitary adenoma from an acromegalic in 1909. Treating endocrine hyperfunction by neurosurgery was a major neurological landmark.

Egas Moniz (1874–1955) in Portugal developed a procedure of leucotomy (now mostly known as lobotomy) to treat severe psychiatric disorders. Though it is often said that the development of lobotomy was inspired by the case of Phineas Gage, a railroad worker who had an iron bar driven through his frontal lobe(s) in 1848, the evidence is against this.