António Egas Moniz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
António Egas Moniz

António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz , born as António Caetano de Abreu Freire de Resende (born November 29, 1874 in Avanca / Estarreja district ; † December 13, 1955 in Lisbon ), was a Portuguese neurologist and politician . In 1949 he and Walter Rudolf Hess received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine -, Moniz "for the discovery of the therapeutic value of prefrontal leukotomy in certain psychoses".

Life

António Caetono de Abreu, who later took the name of the Portuguese freedom fighter Egas Moniz de Ribadouro , studied medicine at the University of Coimbra from 1894 to 1899 , where he received his doctorate in 1901 and completed his habilitation in 1902 with a thesis on the physiology and pathology of sexual life.

From 1909 to 1944 Moniz was a professor at the University of Lisbon . In 1917 he was the Portuguese ambassador to Spain . From 1918 to 1919 he was Portuguese Foreign Minister and headed the Portuguese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference .

In 1928 he developed the arteriography of the cerebral vessels in living people. To do this , he injected contrast media into the patient's blood in order to then photograph the brain and use the images to find tumors . In 1940 his book Die cerebrale Arteriographie und Phlebographie was published by Springer-Verlag . Moniz and his colleagues also performed angiocardiographic imaging of the right ventricle and pulmonary arteries in 1936 (as was also practiced by Pierre Louis Jules Marie Ameuille in 1936).

Moniz was the founder of psychosurgery and friends with the neurosurgery specialist Otfried Foerster . In 1935, Moniz performed the first lobotomy on a patient with incurable brain damage with the assistance of John Farquhar Fulton . The nerve tracts in the anterior brain region are severed. The controversial procedure allegedly cured sick people of their delusions , but it could also irreparably change their personality. Some affected patients became nursing cases and lost their intelligence. Despite a lack of experience in surgery, he performed such operations on (mostly female) patients without their consent. This is why clubs are still calling for the Nobel Prize to be revoked from Moniz.

On March 14, 1939, Moniz was shot by one of his patients and used a wheelchair from then on . He died on his family farm in 1955 at the age of 81.

literature

Web links

Commons : António Egas Moniz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1949. NobelPrize.org, accessed November 27, 2006 .
  2. ↑ Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Egaz Moniz, António. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , pp. 335 f .; here: p. 335.
  3. ↑ Axel W. Bauer : Ameuille, Pierre Louis Jules Marie. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 51.
  4. ↑ Werner Gottwald: Otfrid Foerster (1873-1941) at the beginning of modern neurosurgery. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 13, 1995, pp. 431-448; here: p. 445.
  5. ↑ John Sutherland: Should they de-Nobel Moniz? In: online edition of the Guardian . August 2, 2004, accessed October 8, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Moniz, António Egas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Moniz, Egas; Moniz, António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Portuguese neurologist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Avanca
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1955
Place of death Lisbon